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Last week I had the misfortune to have to spend several hours in a medical admissions unit with a relative who had been admitted to hospital. And as we sat for hour upon interminable hour waiting for him to be allocated a bed on an appropriate ward we watched from our third floor vantage point as two workmen fixed a structure atop the hospital roof. As they worked I thought to myself – I know a good personal injury solicitor.
In a hospital, or on a hospital to be more exact, you would reason that the application of rigorous health and safety procedure would be paramount, and from my limited knowledge of the incidence of work-related accidents, I appreciate that falls from height are one of the biggest cause of fatalities, but the two workmen we were observing seemed very precarious in their position.
Yes, they were wearing hard hats, high visibility tabards, and what looked like protective footwear, so that all looked appropriate for their safety, and they had accessed the roof via a secure platform situated below the roof edge, but unfortunately in the middle, between the structures that the men were fixing, so it would be no use in the event of a fall to capture them. And what's more, when I looked at their harnesses, which both men were dutifully wearing, I could clearly see that both workers were walking across the roof without their lanyards being attached to safety lines.
My relative shuddered at the thought of what the men were doing – they were at least thirty feet from the ground, there were no nets or edge protection – they just climbed up from the platform and walked over the roof towards the defective structures and then knelt down to carry out their repairs. Once finished, they traversed the ten feet of roof to the other structure and fixed that as well.
Now from where we were on the ward, I couldn't see roof safety lines, but when I went to another part of the building in the afternoon safety lines were clearly visible embedded into the roof. And because I know there are many different permutations of safety system for all types of roof and roof access, I can also say that the workers were not using safety ladders installed onto the sloping tiles.
So, my only reasonable thought process can be that the men chose not to anchor themselves properly and consequently put themselves at great risk of personal injury or worse.
According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) falls account for more serious injuries and deaths in construction than any other practice, and roofers account for 24 per cent of those killed in all falls from height. This is by far the biggest category of worker deaths and the HSE's guidelines for roof working accident prevention are therefore rigorous and thorough.
However, it appears that some workers do not heed the advice and the safety features they are offered and it is these workers who might find themselves in a difficult situation after a fall because the first thing a personal injury solicitor will want to know when deciding whether the worker can make a compensation claim against their employer is what safety equipment was provided and was he trained to use it.
These guys on the hospital roof appeared to know what they were doing; they just made life or death decisions about whether or not to use a lifeline.
