There have been two recent serious incidents where individuals have received life changing injuries resulting from inadequate and unplanned access arrangements on the upper floors of construction sites. In both cases, although the floors appeared complete, alterations had taken place in the upper floors but inadequate planning, design and control measures resulted in arrangements that were unsafe, leading to the falls.

The floors were simply cut out but were not provided with adequate support; and were of a size big enough to allow the person to fall through. The resulting falls were from 2.5 metres onto a concrete floor. In both cases the faults were not immediately visible and a failure to appropriately sign and advise the site operatives of their presence, or put adequate control measures in place resulted in the falls and therefore the significant life changing injuries.

FASET therefore strongly recommends the following actions be taken:-

On upper floors of New Build Houses or other construction, during erection and dismantle of Platform Decking
Systems, there are Falls From Height risks, which must be managed.