A coroner has sent a report to the International Powered Access Federation (IPAF) and industry training bodies following the slow rescue of an electrician working at height, who later died in hospital.
Jason Vaughan Holland, 51, had been subcontracted to carry out cabling work on a construction site at Mercia Park. On 10 February 2023, he was found entrapped between a scissor lift and ladder racking at a height of approximately 20m.
As a result of this, he suffered a cardiac arrest which resulted in an unsurvivable brain injury and he died at the Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham.
An investigation into the accident found that principal contractor operatives and subcontractors spent around 20 minutes lowering Holland to the ground safely on the scissor lift platform while being supported by an operative who, harnessed, had climbed from a cherry picker at a height of 20m onto the scissor lift platform.
A second part of the rescue involved retrieving Holland from the 2.5m-high scissor lift platform, before he could be conveyed to an ambulance and taken to hospital.
Lack of practical-based rescue drills
Rutland and North Leicestershire coroner Fiona Butler raised concerns about the lack of practical training on rescue-at-height scenarios or basket-to-basket rescue drills as standard in the MEWPs training syllabus set by IPAF.
She wrote: “All operatives I heard from working for a range of trades had their IPAF cards and not one had ever received practical training of at-height rescue. They all told me that they had received theory-based training only.
“I heard evidence that time is of the essence,” Butler continued, adding that in a suspension from a harness-type scenario (not Holland’s case), five to 15 minutes could be the difference between life or death.
“I am therefore concerned to note that practical-based rescue drills are not part of the standard competence-based training offered for those operating these machines who are likely to be first on-site facilitating rescues.”
IPAF and the bodies that assess the competency of operating MEWPs through IPAF that Butler has written to have 56 days from 6 September to respond to the report and explain the action they will take to prevent future deaths in this area.
Is it not the duty of a Coroner to factually and scientifically, conclude through medical forensics, the nature of the death, rather than making emotionally charged demands to the IPAS, calling for adjustive and preventative training policies concerning rescue protocol. A far stretch from medicine.