08.05.2023

Loading incident

An unloading incident occurred today during the Vertikal Days build up, involving a mast boom.

The machine in question had been squeezed onto the back of a fully loaded trailer, and the trailer ramps widened to fit around the basket for transportation. When the ramps were lowered the machine’s rear wheels prevented the driver from narrowing the gap between the two ramps in order to facilitate the unloading of such a narrow machine.

The Vertikal Safety team arrived to try and stabilise the machine, and assist with the offloading, but as they did so the machine became unstable and overturned. Thankfully no one was anywhere close to machine at the time and no one was hurt.
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The team then focused on the recovery, which was done swiftly with the help of the crack team from a leading crane manufacturer.

The load, which included boom lifts and regular scissors had been loaded and transported by a transport company with experience in loading, moving and unloading platforms, while a driver has delivered such machines on a regular basis and had been properly trained in how to do so, but errors were made in loading and then attempting to unload.

A full incident report has been produced and the incident reported through the IPAF accident reporting portal. While the full information on the fundamental causes of the incident, will be made available in due course, in order that others might learn from what happened etc…

Most importantly now is the message that anyone unloading machines on what will be a very busy day at the site tomorrow should ensure that drivers or staff are particularly diligent.