Monday Accident & Lessons Learned: Crane Accident at Tata Steel Plant in the UK brings £200,000 Guilty Verdict
Tata Steel was found guilty of violating section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The result? A fine of £200,000 plus court costs of £11,190.
HSE Inspector Joanne carter said:
“Given the potential consequences of a ladle holding 300 tonnes of molten metal spilling its load onto the floor, control measures should be watertight. The incident could have been avoided had the safety measures introduced afterwards been in place at the time.”
The article listed the following corrective action:
“Tata has since installed a new camera system, improved lighting, and managers now scrutinise all pre-use checks. If the camera system fails, spotters are put in place to ensure crane hooks are properly latched onto ladle handles.
Here are my thoughts…
- Stating that corrective actions would have prevented an accident is hindsight bias. The question should be, should they have learned these lessons from previous near-misses?
- Reviewing the corrective actions, I’m still left with the question … Should the crane be allowed to operate without the camera system working? Are spotters a good temporary fix? How long should a temporary fix be allowed before the operation is shut down?
- What allows the latches to fail? Shouldn’t this be fixed as well?
What do you think? Is there more to learn from this accident? Leave your comments here.
