Health and Safety at Work Act
Amey Rail Limited did not ensure lifting operations were properly planned, supervised and carried out safely as they are required to under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act.1974. The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) prosecuted them and Amey Rail pleaded guilty to the offence. They were fined £600,000 at Leicester Magistrates Court on 12th November 2021.
On 21st October 2018 a road-rail excavator overturned during an unsafe lift outside Market Harborough station on the Midland Main Line. Several members of the lifting team and others in the nearby vicinity kicked through the toughened glass windscreen to drag the vehicle operator clear of the cab.
Regulation 8 of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 provides that: "Organisation of lifting operations (1) Every employer shall ensure that every lifting operation involving lifting equipment is (a) properly planned by a competent person; (b) appropriately supervised; and (c) carried out in a safe manner. (2) In this regulation 'lifting operation' means an operation concerned with the lifting or lowering of a load."
ORR's investigation into the incident found there was a late change in the equipment being used on the night of the accident, which had inadequate lifting capacity for the planned works. To overcome this, it was established that the length of the track to be lifted would need to be reduced from 30 to 20 feet. This critical change was not managed or communicated correctly and resulted in the track panels being cut to the original length of 30 feet – exceeding the capacity for the excavators to be used.
When lifting started, the on-board safety systems on the excavators showed that the weight being lifted was exceeding what excavators could safely handle. ORR found in its investigation that these warnings were ignored, and the safety systems were disabled to enable the work to continue.
ORR also found that radio-based communication system between the operators and the lifting supervisor developed a defect. Despite replacement equipment being available on site, work continued with the inadequate communications equipment.
These failures led to one of the two excavators becoming overloaded beyond its capacity and toppling onto its side, trapping a worker in the cab, when undertaking a tandem lift of a track panel later established to be 39ft long.
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