A Potentially Severe Event (PSE) occurred at a concrete products site when an employee fell through an unsecured section of steel mesh flooring above an aggregate hopper, the image below shows the flooring. The employee escaped with minor injuries, but these could have been much more serious or even fatal. Following this incident, which occurred in early 2022, the company undertook a series of actions which are summarised in the section below. 

The picture below shows the opening that the employee fell through when the grid became dislodged due to previous overfill of the hopper.

Immediate actions taken:

• Site Managers to plan a stand down to communicate the safety alert, highlighting the severity of the incident and actions to be taken.
• Site Managers to organise an initial and immediate observation of metal grid flooring/steps (internal/external) to identify signs of damage, ie corrosion, dislodgement, missing fixing clips (with potential for movement/dislodgement of grids) and to restrict access to these areas while awaiting repair.
• All sites with grid flooring above aggregate bins must control entry into them until all grids are inspected and made secure.
• All Business Leads to communicate back to head of health and safety on immediate actions.

Further action being taken:

• A Steering Committee has been established to review lessons learnt, introduce new control measures and review suitability of flooring.
• A standard inspection and assessment form is being established by the engineering and SHE departments. 
• A compliance schedule for mandatory inspections will follow.
• External structural inspectors to be sourced where specialist advice is required.
• A review of monitoring controls to prevent overfill of hoppers.

Please also click on the orange box at the bottom right of this alert that says additional pdf 

This is a pdf of the form that was developed by the company as an assessment tool for mesh flooring. It provides images of mesh flooring and grades them under a colour coding of red, amber or green, this is followed by a check list for the individual to follow when inspecting mesh flooring.