The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has warned businesses to identify high hazard activities and deal with them immediately and effectively.

The warning follows a serious incident in which two men fell through a gap between the fourth floor and the lift shaft wall. One man fell over ten metres while his colleague fell two metres.

The pair avoided a falling concrete lintel, which weighed 110 kilogrammes but both still suffered serious injuries in the incident.

Tricon Construction Ltd, who trade out of Harbour Chambers, Dock Street, Dundee were fined £10,000 at Dundee Sheriff Court last Friday after pleading guilty to a charges under section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

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The men were working to cap the lift shaft and were manoeuvring concrete lintels using scaffold as a means of access. Part of this scaffold was unstable and tipped when the workers stood on it causing the men to fall down the outside of the lift shaft.

The access scaffold had not been correctly erected and there was a gap of between 0.5 and 1.0 metres between the existing floor and the wall of the lift shaft.

HSE inspector Murray Provan commented after the case: "This was a very serious incident which Sheriff McNair quite rightly identified as a possible double fatality. Gaps in the flooring of any workplace should be obvious to any reasonably diligent person.

"Falls from height continue to be the number one cause of fatal incidents in the construction industry in Great Britain and it is during refurbishment work, as in this project, that almost half of the fatal incidents occur."

Mr Proven said competence, as highlighted in the recent Construction (Design and Management) Regulations, is the key to preventing such accidents, both in the management of site activities and in the individual worker possessing the skills and experience to complete the work properly and safely.

"A further HSE campaign on refurbishment work throughout the construction industry will take place during March 2009."

(GK/JM)