02.12.2009

Making do with what you have

A reader spotted a working party busy installing new wooden piles/buffers into the harbour wall in a small Cornish port. With both lifting and access equipment required for the job, you might have expected some expensive specialist equipment coming into play?
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Spotted in a Cornish harbour

Not at all! The team were able to get by with a surprising array of makeshift equipment. First the fork lift and single chain provided the lifting mechanism with at least one of the team working on the vey edge of the harbour wall as he pushed and then hammered the pole into position.
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Pushing it into positon

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A hammer will do it

Then it was time to gain access to the pile halfway down the harbour wall… the crew did have a fork mounted platform on hand, but this was of no help below ground level, so an odd kind of suspended platform came into play.
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Now we need some access

The makeshift platform suffered from poor levelling ability and its guardrail system was hardly state of the art and forget any reference to regulations.
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An unusual work platform. Well at least it has guardrails......rail

It looks like this was not the fitting of just one pile, let’s hope the entire crew were able to go to the pub at the end of the day intact and uninjured. Surely this qualifies as one of our Death Wish series.
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A close up of the technology