Maintenace worker's hand crushed

ThyssenKrupp (Materials) UK Ltd, a global materials company was fined nearly £11,000 (inc.costs) on 20 March 2015 after a maintenance engineer’s hand was crushed.

The circumstances were:

• Maintenance work was being carried out at their site in Tyseley on 9 July 2014.
• Chocks had been used to prop a pressure beam of a plate saw while maintenance work was carried out.
• There were no written risk assessments or safe systems of work in place.
• As soon as the chocks were removed, the beam fell on to the employee’s hand. 
• He was off work for more than three months but has since returned to the company.

The HSE inspector said:

“ThyssenKrupp Materials should have spent time working out a safe working methods for all maintenance tasks, especially those which were routine. There were no written risk assessments or safe systems of work in place. The company should also have made sure that the engineers were given the necessary training on the machines and the information they needed to operate them. Instead, they were given nothing and expected to learn as they went along. Since the incident the firm has brought in service engineers to do the most intricate maintenance work and arranged for those engineers to give the employees training on the machines. Had they done this before, a worker could have been spared a painful injury.”