Three incidents and a dropped block
On a groundworks package you deal with four things in one week.
- An operative lacerates his forearm on an unguarded cut-off saw, goes to A&E, has four stitches and a tetanus jab, and is back on light duties the next morning. He did not stay in hospital.
- A breaker operator with eight months on a pneumatic breaker reports blanching in two fingers and tingling at night. His GP's note says 'suspected HAVS - referred'.
- Overnight, the sides of a 2.5m trench heave in and a trench box shifts about 300mm. Nobody is hurt; the trench was not in use.
- Your foreman mentions, almost in passing, that a 200mm concrete block was dropped from a scaffold at 3m the previous week into a barriered area. It was never recorded anywhere.
1. Work through each event and decide whether it is reportable under RIDDOR, with your reasoning.
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1. Cut-off saw laceration - not reportable. It is not a fracture, amputation or other listed specified injury, and treating it in A&E with stitches is not admission to hospital for treatment. He lost no days (back on light duties the next morning), so it is not an over-7-day or over-3-day absence either. Record it in the accident book. Do not report it 'just to be safe' - over-reporting blunts the data and signals you do not know the test.
2. HAVS - not yet reportable. Reportable occupational disease requires a diagnosis by a doctor and the employer receiving that diagnosis in writing. 'Suspected - referred' is not a diagnosis. Record it now, set up to report the moment the diagnosis lands, and act on the exposure regardless.
3. Trench collapse - reportable. The collapse of an excavation, or failure of its support, is a dangerous occurrence. Nobody being injured is irrelevant; the event is on the list precisely because of what it nearly was.
4. Dropped block - not reportable. A dropped object is not a dangerous occurrence under RIDDOR. It remains a serious near-miss and a failure of a control that was supposed to stop it happening at all. The fact it landed in a barriered area is luck and a control barrier, not a defence.
2. What are the timescales and record-keeping for the reportable and the non-reportable events, and what do you do about the dropped block?
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Dangerous occurrence (the trench): notify the enforcing authority without delay by the quickest means available, then submit the written report within 10 days. Do it before the investigation is finished - the notification is not the investigation.
Occupational disease (the HAVS): report as soon as you receive the written diagnosis. Keep the report and the supporting records.
Records: keep records of reportable incidents and the associated particulars for at least three years. The stitched hand goes in the accident book; the near-miss goes in your own incident system.
Dropped block:
- Record it now, retrospectively and honestly. If you can date it from the foreman's account, say so; an undated entry is still infinitely better than silence.
- Investigate it properly: what was the block doing on a scaffold unsecured, who was below, was the barrier the only thing between it and a person, and what was the actual material-handling arrangement?
- Fix the system, not the individual: brick guards, netting, toe boards, a no-loose-material rule at height, and a verbal reporting route that people trust.
- Feed it into the next toolbox talk and the weekly inspection.
The real lesson is the foreman's 'almost in passing'. A culture where near-misses travel that quietly is a reporting failure well before it is a falling-object failure.
3. What should the HAVS case set in motion, and why is 'wait for the referral' the wrong response?
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A confirmed or suspected case in one operator is a signal about a systemic exposure, not an individual misfortune. The other breakers operators have been exposed to the same tools, the same trigger times and the same lack of health surveillance.
So, now:
- Introduce health surveillance for everyone using the breakers and other vibrating tools, not just this man.
- Assess exposure against the daily exposure action value of 2.5 m/s² and the limit value of 5 m/s², using the tools' declared vibration magnitudes and actual trigger times, and set trigger times people can work to.
- Attack the source: tool selection and low-vibration alternatives, maintenance and sharp bits, job rotation, warm rest area, dry gloves, and reporting of numbness as a routine matter. Anti-vibration gloves help with cold and cut risk, not with the vibration itself.
- Review the men's hours - eight months of continuous breaker work suggests nobody was counting.
Why 'wait for the referral' fails: the referral takes weeks, and every one of those weeks the exposure continues for him and for everyone else. You do not need a diagnosis to control a risk - the Regulations do not wait for one, and neither should you. The diagnosis only determines whether a RIDDOR report follows, not whether you act.