Various Dropped Objects - Near Miss Incidents

Description of Incident

Three dropped object incidents were reported on assets. Although no personnel were harmed, such dropped objects have the potential to cause serious harm:

Incident #1: A team of scaffolders were tasked with erecting scaffolding within the wellheads area of an offshore installation. As the team were passing materials down, a foreign object in the form of a broom handle dropped out of a scaffold tube and narrowly missed one of the scaffolders.

Incident #2: A scaffold team were in the process of dismantling long-term scaffold. As they were doing this a hammer fell to the ground from a cable tray.

Incident #3: A team of scaffolders were in the process of dismantling scaffolding when an insulation knife fell out of a scaffold tube.

Findings:

• Incidents #1 & #3: The negligent behaviours of individuals were determined to be the root cause the incidents - individuals wrongly made the decision to store a foreign object in a scaffold tube.

• Incident #2: It is understood the hammer had been positioned on the cable tray for a long period of time based on the condition of the hammer. The activities of the scaffolders disturbed the hammer on the cable tray causing it to drop.

Recommendations:

• Personnel must ensure that Life-saving Rules on the Line of Fire and Working at Height are always practised. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of barriers/exclusion zones and ensuring tools/work materials are secured to prevent dropped objects.

• Foreign objects should not be stored in scaffold tubes.

• Scaffolders must ensure suitable caps or pads are applied to accessible scaffold tubes to prevent foreign items being stored within tubes.