The tragic fatal incident happened in front of me at one of the green field power plant construction site at Rajasthan almost 8 years ago. The construction site was situated far from town and most of the workmen were employed from a nearby village place. They were mainly unskilled and lacked knowledge regarding safety management system. Being human and a safety professional, I cannot erase the fatal incident that took place at site from my mind. Till date, I am searching for an answer as to “why workmen are not following safe work practices“. At construction site most of the workmen were not wearing even mandatory PPE, like safety shoes, safety helmet, hand gloves and safety harness etc. In my capacity as Project Lead of entire fabrication and installation of built up section for boiler structures at site, I used to have walk through along with respective construction supervisors of the construction site everyday morning ,noon and evening. The major activities were fabrication of steel structure to prepare H section columns from plate of various thickness and most of them were 20.0 meters. During preparation of column, welding was done with automatic machines online. On the fateful day, I was at the heavy built up fabrication yard. Welding for one of the heavy column was completed and it was being lifted with the help of gantry hoist to shift it to another location. The workforce team consisting of two workmen, one was to tie the belt slings around column for lifting and other workman operated gantry to shift the tied column to storage location. On ensuring firmly tied sling on column it was raised to height and shifted with the help of gantry hoist. While unloading the same column, it was rested on Gantry bed at adjoining column with hardly any clearance between two columns. The first workman was removing belt sling from one of the ends of the column to make it free and at the same instance, one of his slippers slipped from his leg and fell on to the ground. Without informing anybody he bent down to collect the slipper which went unnoticed by the workman who was operating gantry hoist and he lowered the column. The complete lowering on the bed crushed his body between two columns and within few seconds he was no more.
It was one of the shocking and heart-wrenching accidents in my life that shook my sentiments and feelings. In spite of several reminders, precautionary directives and repeated timely instructions to the workmen on following the EHS rules and procedure during execution of work. The poor workman did not wear the safety shoes and due to a small lapse, a silly mistake, he lost his life. Rigging activity, loading, unloading and transportation of heavy load is a major issue that demands serious attention from supervisory and managerial levels of the organization.
A strict adherence to EHS management system is to be imposed to prevent such fatal incident, medical treatment or lost time cases. There is a dire need of safety training and education to the bare minimum level which in turn shall increase the knowledge, skill, competency of workmen and supervisors. The system to define roles and responsibilities, accountability prompt and timely management commitment along with statutory compliances shall have an added effect on reduction of all types of incidents including such fatal ones.