More questions than answers

At 3.50pm on Sunday 21 May, 2000 in Canary Wharf, erectors were putting the last section on a tower crane. They were just 15 minutes from finishing when they saw one of the climbing frame’s guide wheels moving around the mast.

Something was dangerously wrong.

Two of the crew jumped onto the ladder within the mast, thereby saving their lives. Then the frame tilted around its north-eastern leg, made sharp popping noises and the mast shook violently.

When it stopped they looked down and saw with horror the climbing frame twisted on the ground below. Among the wreckage were the bodies of Michael Whittard, Peter Clark and Martin Burgess. They’d fallen 120m.

Five years later the cause of the accident is still unknown. Arguably, though, it’s not through lack of trying. There was an inquest and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) convened a technical committee, released a discussion paper, hired in experts and finally issued a report in May of this year.

Inconclusive

But instead of putting the issue to rest, the report has made everyone angry, from the victims’ families to the former MD of the crane company involved. Operators can’t make solid reforms because the report is so inconclusive, yet they’re burdened with an onerous new certification regime. The families of the victims still don’t know whom to blame, and legal action may still be looming. Even renegade MP George Galloway has waded into the fray.

From the beginning, the HSE said it might not be able to point the finger of blame. It seemed to run out of leads after considering factors as various as the wind speed, a kink in part of the climbing frame and the competence and workload of the erectors. Physical reconstructions had been mounted but damage to the climbing frame had made the investigation difficult. The crane’s black box had been destroyed and had not been logging crane movements anyway. The crane had no anemometer.

But when an HSE spokesman revealed that the investigation might have to be closed with no conclusion if no new information came to light at the inquest, one of the victim’s sisters, Caroline Clark, was outraged.

“I’m furious,” she told a local newspaper. “I don’t believe everything that could be done has been done. The investigation should stay open until they give us some answers. Otherwise it’s a complete waste of three lives.”

The inquest reached an open verdict and the HSE set up a technical review group, which considered issues raised by the inquest. Then it issued a discussion paper full of general recommendations to the industry.

Next, instead of closing the investigation, it expanded it. Two unnamed experts in crane accident theory were brought in to review the material gathered thus far, and they offered two further speculative conclusions: that the yoke spigots might have become disengaged from the catching hooks, and that the crane was weak ‘in principle’. But they weren’t convinced these were true.

Nothing to recommend

The HSE also examined the only other known incident of this type, the collapse of a crane in San Francisco in 1989 where erectors fell onto an intersection and were killed along with a bus driver. But the findings of the American report were much more conclusive, blaming overloaded members, incorrect operation of the crane and slewing during operation. And even after this second push the final report was resoundingly inconclusive. The crane industry was left wondering what to do. Colin Wood of the Construction Plant Hire Association said that the lack of conclusions gave him nothing to recommend to his members. “If they were operating the crane in the wrong way, then we could do something,” he said. “But they could not pin down any one reason for the problem so that would be impossible and our members are hiring out cranes in the same way.”

Terry Duxbury, a director of the United Crane Operators’ Association calls the report “a waste of time,” adding that nothing but the crane design was pinpointed. “They seem to have found a way of not putting the blame on anybody.”

We must make sure that not only do the families of the victims get justice, but that all workers ... are under the highest standards of health and safety

George Galloway MP

Mike Williams, the HSE’s principal inspector of construction, and the man responsible for the report, defends it. “We have tried unusually hard to get to the bottom of what happened,” he said.

But some in the industry are puzzled by his approach, particularly bringing in external experts, and suggest the HSE doubted its own ability to deal with the matter. Williams insists that all witnesses and operatives were thoroughly interviewed.

But Paul Phillips, managing director of Hewden Stuart Cranes at the time of the accident, questions the thoroughness of the investigation.

“A conversation with me as the employer of the three men before they put the report together would have been good,” he said. “But to talk to me might possibly have had legal implications for the HSE.” Williams, though, maintains it was right to look out rather than in.

“Expanding a report [to include external experts] does not necessarily diffuse things but can lead to a clarity, which can protect against legal consequences and lead to the alteration of standards.”

But where is the clarity? Pressed for a chief safety flag from the report, Williams suggested crane operators may be under pressure to work unreasonable hours. But he was unwilling to place this above any other recommendation.

Recently, Phillips has become a champion of reforms to the crane industry recommended in the HSE report. Admitting that the incident had “changed” him, he said he had been helping redraft British standards on tower cranes. And he’s been busy on new crane designs, establishing training programmes with the CITB and increasing safety awareness. He intends to lead a push to “re-brand” and “professionalise” the industry early next year.

The report is already having an effect, especially on training, but not everyone likes it. Now a new certificate for each type of crane is required and ‘sitting by Nellie’, or learning on the job, is being phased out. Duxbury calls the situation “bureaucracy gone mad”.

“The CITB are causing a revolt in the industry and they seem to be oblivious to it,” he said. “They want to make morons of the erectors, removing all the interest of the job. All the tests and safety stuff is causing unemployment. They have just been going round in circles and don’t know what’s going on. Nobody’s going to admit there’s no point to it.” He promises more unrest.

Families not satisfied

Meanwhile, legal storm clouds, which the HSE seemed to want to dispel, may be gathering.

“The families are still not satisfied and are likely to take action through the courts,” Phillips says and claims that Clark, who could not be contacted for this article, has approached members of the Houses of Lords and Commons. And he believes the insurance companies are still involved. Even George Galloway, Respect Coalition MP and Member for Bethnal Green and Bow, got involved, telling a newspaper he believed prosecution may be in the public interest. “We must make sure that not only do the families of the victims get justice, but that all workers on building sites across the country are looked after under the highest standards of health and safety by their employers,” he said.

So the big question still hangs. Why did it happen? Or more to the point, whose fault was it? Five years of comfortingly rational probing hasn¹t provided the answer. Maybe it will turn up in the bruising atmosphere of the courtroom where insurance counsels fight for big money and bereaved families seek at least one conviction.