Construction firms fined for road crash
August 11th 09:29 Health and Safety
Having adequate facilities management provisions in place could be vital for a company after two construction firms were fined by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for a road crash.
Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering Ltd and Multibuild Ltd were fined a total of £81,363 after pleading guilty to causing a crash of a 44-tonne machine on a busy main road in Hull.
Health and safety laws were breached when a piling machine fell over and rolled across the road before crushing a wall in December 2007.
The court found after a HSE investigation that Multibuild Ltd had failed to design or install a stone platform for the machine to work from correctly.
HSE Inspector Dave Redman commented: "This incident could easily have resulted in disaster, and it is nothing short of a miracle that no one was killed or seriously injured given it occurred during the peak of the evening rush hour.
"It is every company's responsibility to ensure that employees and members of the public are not exposed to danger from heavy construction machinery."
