Why safety should be priority on any job
Many of you will have heard of the recent, tragic case of Jamie Mines. The 34 year-old scaffolder was working at the top of a scaffolding structure helping to build a temporary shelter using corrugated iron panels, and above him were a series of power lines with 33,000 volts of electricity coursing through them.
Although health and safety rules state that pylons must have a 9.8 foot exclusion zone around them, Mines’s platform was only 8.8 feet away. Devastatingly, the corrugated iron that Mines was working with either touched our got too close to the pylons, and he was consequently shocked by the terrifying force of the electricity whilst he was working.
The consequences were stomach-turning. After being in a medically-induced coma for six months, Mines had to have both his forearms, his right leg and his left foot amputated following the terrifying accident, and will now have to live the remainder of his life as a considerably less able man. The accident is made even worse considering that Mines is the father of two young girls and will never be able to hold or play with his children in the same way again.
What this agonising story tells us is that safety should always be the priority on each and every job you work on. Cutting corners and ignoring extremely important safety regulation can have dire consequences for both you and your family. What’s more, the company that Mines worked at for 3 months before his tragic accident occurred, Swindon-based Boundary Scaffolding Ltd, was charged £80,000 for breach of health and safety laws and its Managing Director, Jonathon Griffiths-Clack, was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence and fined £1,545.
Whilst it’s clear that Mines’s life has certainly been affected much worse than that of Griffiths-Clack’s, Boundary Scaffolding has been dealt a huge financial blow by the terrible incident. The company had a good record of health and safety principles and was well-regarded in the local area, which highlights even further the need to always check safety on each and every job you work on. In this case, one seemingly-small oversight has done tremendous damage to an innocent individual as well as having a huge impact on a previously-reputable business.
Before you begin work on any site, it’s vital that your site managers conduct thorough hazard evaluations on the areas that you’re working on. These may take extra time to conduct and, resultantly, cost you and your company extra money. But as the case of Jamie Mines has surely taught us this year, money pales in comparison to the importance of safety at work.