25.02.2004

Man falls to his death on Coventry site

A man died yesterday on a Skanska UK building site at the Walsgrave hospital in Coventry. The unnamed 57-year-old man is understood to have fallen between 15 and 20 metres down a lift shaft.

The job is a Private Finance Initiative operated by Skanska who started work last year on the hospital rebuild for University Hospitals Coventry and the Warwickshire NHS Trust. The scheme is due for completion by 2007.

The HSE issued the following statement : "It is very early days at the moment but we have had investigators on site yesterday afternoon and a joint investigation with the police has been launched." No other details are available at this time.

This year has not started well for the number of falls from heights on UK construction sites and will certainly focus the attention of the HSE who are striving to meet challenging targets to reduce the number of falls from height which represent the largest cause of deaths and injury on building sites.