death of a geological surveyor on friday

[kevin wooldridge]

I am not going to be critical of the court decision - it is time that this legislation was shown to have teeth - however there must be a contributory factor involved in this chap's crazy decision to get into a trench of those dimensions.....

[ex-archaeologist]

This is clearly a very sad case. These are two extracts from the company director's testimony taken from various articles on Google News.

In a DVD police interview shown to the jury at Winchester Crown Court, Mr Eaton said he had been using the same procedures to dig trial pits since 1971 and he admitted he had overall responsibility for the health and safety of his staff.
He said his health and safety booklet had been written in 1992 and he had been "threatening" to update it but had never found the time.


The booklet said that staff should not enter unsupported pits deeper than 1.2 metres, but Mr Eaton said this did not apply to geologists like Mr Wright or himself, who had both built up a practical knowledge of soil and the dangers. He said he had inspected 7,000 pits during his career and Mr Wright 600 to 700.

In the statement, Mr Eaton said no-one should ever enter a pit without someone being present above ground and that Mr Wright, who he described as competent and experienced and "not fresh from university", knew this.
He described how one pit had collapsed on the site that day during the work and he had said to Mr Wright: "That's it. Enough is enough. All intrusive work is over for the day."


"There was absolutely no need for Alex to go into trial pit five. I do not know why he did what he did," he said. "There is no way he would have thought I would have expected him to re-enter the pit. I was astonished that Alex was in any of the trial pits."

[rossclark]

They certainly did teach health and safety on my university course, but I'm not thinking it's that common based on conversations I've had on digs with folk who went elsewhere.

Working in Bulgaria last year, I visited a Roman site with unsupported excavations up to at least 10ft, probably even higher. That looked really kinda scary.

I've not yet got a CSCS card, but is this the kind of thing that's included on the course?

[J.McGraw]

I've not yet got a CSCS card, but is this the kind of thing that's included on the course?

Having just taken my CSCS test a couple of days ago, I have to say it's pretty useless as far as archaeology goes. There's sensible stuff like not touching bare wires and disposing of contaminated substances properly, but the only section on excavations seems to assume work being undertaken completely underground (with air monitors and such) and there's nothing about working in a trench alone and out of shouting distance of others.

[sadie]

Your employer's Health and Safety Policy should have a clause that says something like :' no staff shall work in deep excavations alone', and Confined Space training tickets are getting more common for us these days- the guidance says you must have at least a top man/woman at the top of a trench to keep an eye on you.

Having said all that- of course there is no way anyone should be getting in trenches that are more than c1.2m deep without them being shored. Or shallower trenches of the sides are loose, made of rubble, in wet conditions etc etc.

[BAJR]

What Sadie says is absolutely true... and remember you are just as responsible as the employer. You do not take a risk.

In carrying out an excavation, the soil conditions can vary widely, often in short distances. No soil, whatever its nature, can be relied upon to support its own weight for any length of time - let alone any additional loads which may be imposed by plant and materials. Even a small fall of earth is capable of inflicting serious injury, even if it does not kill.

This is a useful document I find:
http://www.axa.co.uk/assets/documents/ax...ations.pdf
and includes info about such things as the safe angle of differnt types of soils under normal conditions that should be self-supporting.

and this of course
http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/safet...ations.htm

[gwyl]

Your employer's Health and Safety Policy should have a clause that says something like :' no staff shall work in deep excavations alone', and Confined Space training tickets are getting more common for us these days- the guidance says you must have at least a top man/woman at the top of a trench to keep an eye on you.

Having said all that- of course there is no way anyone should be getting in trenches that are more than c1.2m deep without them being shored. Or shallower trenches of the sides are loose, made of rubble, in wet conditions etc etc.

that said, one of our chaps - the H&S man, indeed - was in a trench 300mm deep last january; lost his balance, fell, bust his knee, still going to hospital for physio. the moral being that it can happen to us all, and that one must be aware the whole time on site. and even then...

[ex-archaeologist]

?385 000 Fine

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourb...ction.html

[GPStone]

This should be a much needed wake-up call for all archaeologists at every level across the industry. The fact is, if a trench collapses and covers you at any point above the waist, circulation to the legs and abdomen can be lost resulting in anything from crush injuries, through loss of limbs and up to death. As a previous poster stated, we have all done things which are absurd in the course of our jobs in this industry and many of us will pale at the thought of the possible outcomes when we actually stop and think about them. Perhaps we wouldn't do them again, or perhaps adrenalin will lure us into that false security.

But it isn't just personal common sense and paper which will effect a necessary change in our practises, its for those of us who now know better to turn around to someone just out of uni or our mate who's been pulling off the same risky manouvers around machine buckets for all his/her career, and telling them to stop and why.

[GnomeKing]

I do not disagree with any of the above, but I would like to add this;

some professions are inherently riskier than others - and of course all measures must be taken to reduce that risk.
however sometimes an element of risk will never go away.
Better organised and more venerable professions (generally) recognise this residual risk in the form of high indemnities, and higher risk-related pay for their employees.

1.2m guarantees nothing, either above or below - ratios of depth to width + nature of substrates + conditions + exposure time + method of excavation + informed knowledge = a sensible place from which to begin...

experience and caution are he only real guides.

1.2m should not used as rigid guide to write-off all deeper archaeology as 'inaccessible'