A Glasgow-based company has been fined £200,000 following the death of an employee at the Annick Water Viaduct in Stewarton, Ayrshire.
SW Global Resourcing Limited pled guilty to breaching health and safety laws over the death of Leslie Watson in April 2010.
Employees were working to cap and grout strengthening rods which had been inserted across the arches of the Annick Water Viaduct. This involved using mobile elevated work platforms (MEWPs) positioned on concrete plinths. Despite the fact all the plinths were built on sloping ground with the front ends of some of the plinths significantly higher than the immediately adjacent ground, none of them were built with any end stops or edge protection.
Mr Watson was working from the basket of a MEWP positioned at a height of about 13 metres when the platform drove off the edge of the concrete plinth and overturned, throwing Mr Watson against a column of the Viaduct and from there to the shallow river bed.
Gary Aitken, Head of the COPFS Health & Safety Division, said, “SW Global Resourcing Limited accepted liability and the Crown accepted their guilty plea to the contraventions of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974. This was an entirely avoidable tragedy which has left family and friends devastated at the loss of a loved one.”
