A judge has slated AETC Ltd (a specialist engineering company) for failures to have robust safe systems of work in place for maintenance tasks.  This follows a fatal injury to of one of the maintenance engineers who was trying to fix a fault in a vacuum casting furnace.  He entered the furnace without first isolating the equipment and releasing the stored energy and was crushed to death.

The HSE investigation had found that the company did not have an effective isolation procedure in place when maintenance work was carried out.  Instead the company had determined the maintenance fitter was experienced and trained and therefore was competent to assess the risks of when it was safe to enter into the furnace.  However the HSE identified that the furnace required 11 separate lockouts and that the furnace was too complicated to leave to the competence of the fitter.  The HSE served a Prohibition Notice on the company.

Recently, we have worked with a Blue Chip company to identify where improvements can be made in respect to confined space entry as their health & safety team have been concerned that their entry systems were not as robust as they would like them to be.  We did in fact find that although they had many good practices in place that entry and isolation controls could be improved with a consistent approach.  Our client has taken this on board and is working to make the necessary improvements.

Unfortunately for AETC Ltd of Leeds (which is part of American company PCC Airfoils);  The US based corporate health & safety manager had for some years made recommendations for improvement but these had been overlooked.   This failure to act clearly contributed to the fatal incident at the company and should serve as a warning to other businesses to make sure there is a consistent, monitored isolation procedure in place.

The court found AETC Ltd guilty of breaching the HSWA and they were fined £300,000 and ordered to pay costs of £77,500.

If you have maintenance teams working on or inside equipment why not check to see if you have effective controls in place.  If you need an independent audit to check then why not see how we could help?