09.11.2009

SGB pleads guilty

UK based Scaffold company SGB has pleaded guilty to breaches of Health & Safety legislation following an accident IN 2003 during construction of Heathrow Airports Terminal 5.

The fatal accident involved the failure of a number of SGB’s Threaded Shoring Adaptors on a shoring system platform, which killed Mathew Gilbert, 27, and seriously injured Parminder Singh, 21. Click here to see original reports.

SGB has issued a statement which sums up in detail exactly what happened, which appears to vindicate its position. We publish the full unedited statement below.

Statement

“On Friday 6th November, SGB pleaded guilty to two breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The offences came to light during the investigation into the tragic death of an employee of Laing O’Rourke and serious injuries suffered by another in July 2005.”

“The background to these offences is that in early 2003 a subcontractor of SGB called Boultons had manufactured a batch of components called Threaded Shoring Adaptors (TSAs), which SGB supplied to a number of its customers. Unfortunately, Boultons had not manufactured this particular batch in accordance with the design drawing supplied to them by SGB meaning that they were not as strong as the components were intended to be. They were then supplied by SGB to customers in the belief that they were of normal strength and indeed at the time of their supply data sheets were given to customers stating that they were of standard strength.”

“A few months later SGB identified the problem and immediately put in place a series of measures to control any risk including advising all customers who had received the product that they should use a reduced safe working load, and a recovery operation was put in place to arrange for the controlled return of the sub-standard TSAs to SGB. Although, the situation was serious, the overall risk was not as high as it might have been as TSAs are rarely used in situations where their full strength is required.”

“One of the customers who had received TSAs was Laing O’Rourke, working on the Terminal 5 development project. Like all other customers, they were immediately warned of the issue and given assistance by SGB to identify any sub-standard TSAs for return to SGB. In total, 628 sub-standard TSAs had been supplied to customers. Nearly all of them were returned from other sites but unfortunately the investigation into this incident two years later showed that a number were not returned by Laing O’Rourke at T5, despite many of those having been marked two years earlier in 2003 for return.”

“Unfortunately, the incident that occurred on 3 July 2005 at T5 was triggered by failures of the TSAs. These were TSAs that had been marked for return. SGB greatly regrets that its components were part of the structure that failed and everyone at SGB was greatly affected by the tragedy that occurred. Everyone involved from SGB sends its sincere condolences to Matthew Gilbert’s family and hopes also that Mr Singh has been able to make a good recovery. The company’s thoughts continue to be with Matthew Gilbert’s family and Mr Singh.”

“SGB acknowledges that it should have had better systems in place in 2003 to ensure that the substandard TSA’s were not supplied in the first place. SGB notes that if the downrated TSA’s had been returned as requested in August 2003 the accident would not have occurred. In addition, if the TSA’s had been used as intended the loading would not have exceeded the downrated safe working loads and the TSA’s would not have failed. The HSE explicitly agreed prior to today’s hearing that SGB’s initial failure with respect to supply did not cause the accident.”

“SGB would like to make it clear that it has taken measures following this incident to prevent a similar situation happening again. This includes that SGB now uses a different subcontractor to manufacture TSAs and has tightened its systems for identifying any sub-standard product before it is supplied.”

Vertikal Comment

It seems that while SGB had failed in not checking the components sufficiently in the first place, it does appear to have taken steps to recall the components as soon as it discovered the problem.

As most manufacturers know all too well trying to get owners to react promptly to recalls is a struggle. And yet if a retrofit has not been carried out, almost regardless of what the manufacturer does, it is still likely to be punished.

In the UK if a company does not plead guilty to Health & Safety prosecutions the punishment should it loose is likely to be substantially higher, so lawyers typically advise even innocent companies to plead guilty and ask for leniency. Not exactly justice but it can be argued that such prosecutions does make companies step up their efforts. Sadly the real rogues are often not prosecuted.

What this case does suggest is that companies carrying out a recall really do need to promote the recall widely through as many communication channels as possible. All too often companies understandably try hard to avoid any publicity for a recall. Perhaps this case will show that a fully open and wide communication is best after all?