During his talk, he asked an open ended question to the roughly 200 participants if anyone wanted to talk about mistakes they had made that could have led to injuries or even fatalities. There was complete silence in the hall. No one dared to speak. In that situation, I couldn’t come up with any examples of my own, but it struck me later in the evening that I myself have a perfect example of a mistake in a construction context that could have had a very unfortunate outcome.

During the 1970s in my hometown, the flag from our large flagpole had blown into a large birch tree that my parents had in their garden. The flag was too high up to manage to free it with a ladder or long stick, and it was also difficult to climb the tree. My father realised that only a skylift, as it was called at the time, could provide a solution. He rented a trailer lift from the local machine rental company and brought it home. He backed it out onto the lawn where the flagpole stood and disconnected it from the car. Today I realise that it would have been better if it had been connected in the car. There was also a bit of manoeuvring the anchoring with support wheels. 

I was given the task of going up in the skylift and freeing the flag as I was the youngest and most resilient. I carefully began to manoeuvre the lift upwards and outwards towards where the flag was stuck. It should be added that our plot of land was quite hilly and sloping. The flagpole stood on a grass plateau, and below it was a large stone area with perennials that sloped down to a large lawn with apple and plum trees. When I got a good distance up in the air, I got a fantastic view of the local lake, and the surrounding area, and the tops of the apple trees swaying in the wind. In order to get into position and reach the flag, I had to swing out the boom on the skylift a little. But when the boom came into a new position in relation to the lift chassis, the support needed to hold the lift in place was missing. The whole lift started to topple with me at the top of the basket. 

The whole thing occurred rapidly but I had time to think what would happen when the knee of the boom hit the ground so to speak. Effectively, I would be ejected like a stone from a catapult, and I imagined myself flying over the stone part and landing in one of the apple trees further down in the garden. But just before the boom’s knee hit the ground, the lift basket passed the flagpole meaning I was basically in level with the flagpole knob. I fortunately possessed the presence of mind to leap out of the basket and grab the flagpole, thereby avoiding flying into the apple trees, whilst the lift continued down towards the ground. Fortunately, the flagpoles at the time were made of solid wood, at least the one we had was. The flagpole rocked back and forth a few times before everything became still with me clinging to the top. I was then able to calmly and safely descend to the ground. Basically, everything was wrong with this handling of the skylift, and it was lucky in this scenario that I didn’t have a safety harness on. If the same thing happened today, and at the age I am now, I would never be able to perform such acrobatics to save myself!

On a recent job, a demolition worker in Stockholm was unfortunately not as lucky as I was. He was on a renovation demolition project involving the removal of the interior of a property. The materials from the excavation were dropped from a balcony on the fourth floor into a container. He somehow managed to get over the edge with the front wheels of the material handler he was using. This meant that the equipment lost balance and tipped over, plunging him and the machine into the container. Sadly the man’s life could not be saved. From these examples can be seen that we really need to focus on reducing workplace accidents and increasing discussions in the open so that we can learn from accidents.

 

Jan Hermansson
Editor-in-Chief
jan.hermansson@pdworld.com