A tower crane section was dropped while being dismantled on the new £600m Midland Metropolitan Hospital that is under construction in Smethwick.
A 20-metre section of crane fell onto a flat roof of the building.
Part of a crane has collapsed onto a roof structure at a £600 million new hospital being built in Smethwick. West Midlands Fire Service was called to the scene at around 11.40am but there were no injuries reported.
A Balfour Beatty statement said: “We can confirm that an incident took place on our Midland Metropolitan Hospital site on 9th April 2019 whereby a section of crane fell whilst being dismantled.
“The health and safety of the public and our workforce is always our primary concern and we can confirm that no one was hurt as a result of this incident. The surrounding area was immediately secured and works have now ceased on site while the crane section is safely removed, after which works will resume.”
It concluded: “An investigation is on-going into the cause and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.”
Work on the Midland Met Hospital came to a halt in January 2018 when main contractor Carillion went into liquidation.
In October Balfour Beatty was awarded a £10m+ enabling works contract to repair weather damage that the building had suffered since January and to prepare the building for completion of construction. A contract for completion of main works has yet to be awarded.
Under Carillion, the hospital was being built with the assistance of five Wolff flat-top tower cranes, on hire from rental company HTC Wollfkran, owned by the Swiss/German manufacturer Wolffkran. It appears as though it was one of these whose dismantling went wrong.
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