Cheltenham Magistrates’ Court heard how an employee, who was working at Keller’s earth retaining division, Phi Group, was eventually diagnosed as suffering from HAVS after repeatedly flagging his symptoms to the company for over five years.
An investigation by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) found the company did not have the right system in place to manage the workers’ health as it did not have a suitable health surveillance programme in place to monitor for the early onset of HAVS, to prevent the irreversible condition from developing.
Keller Limited of Oxford Road, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry, pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 7(1) of the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005. It was fined £6,000 and ordered to pay costs of £2,263.45.
HSE inspector Mehtaab Hamid said after the hearing: “This was a case of the company completely failing to grasp the importance of HAVS health surveillance. If they had understood why health surveillance was necessary, it would have ensured that it had the right systems in place to monitor worker’s health and the employee’s condition would not have been allowed to develop to a severe and life altering stage.”
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Keller has subsequently reviewed and amended its procedure, as explained in a blog post by Phi Group managing director Julian Fletcher on Kellers' website. He says that Phi Group typically builds more than 300 retaining walls every year using its own directly employed installers. Nearly every wall has material that needs compacting as part of the design and construction process. Subsequent investigation by the company found that the level of vibration magnitude of the various tools and plant that it uses are "always higher than the manufacturer’s data".
Manufacturers' data is the level of vibration under test conditions and does not always reflect the actual vibration exposure when using it. "So, for example, when using a disc cutter, the vibration varies significantly depending on what is being cut, which blade is being used, and even how hard the blade is being pushed into the material being cut. With compaction plant the vibration magnitude varies significantly depending on the type and density of the material being compacted," Mr Fletcher writes.
Keller now monitors employees' times on each piece of equipment with the Curotec system, he says. This stores all the data and can be downloaded and reviewed centrally to ensure all personnel are working within the safe limits.
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