Wind farm agency fined £860,000 after employee was crushed to loss of life in a concrete skip

A construction company has been fined £860,000 after an employee was crushed to death while working on the site of an island wind farm.

Liam MacDonald, from Tain, Ross-shire, was found with heavy machinery pinned to his chest inside a skip he had been cleaning at Viking Energy’s construction site in Shetland in 2022.

He had been crushed by the skip’s bale arm, weighing 170lb. The 23-year-old was working for contractor BAM Nuttall when the tragedy happened on June 5 that year.

The firm, which pleaded guilty to breaching health and safety laws, was fined £800,000 and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £60,000 at Lerwick Sheriff Court yesterday.

The fine was reduced from £1.2million for the early timing of the company’s plea.

Sheriff Ian Cruickshank said he had to impose a fine which ‘sends a message that companies must do all within their power to ensure safe working practices’. 

The court heard the incident was ‘not indicative of a cavalier attitude to health and safety’.

But Sheriff Cruickshank said Mr MacDonald had been sent to chip off hardened concrete from the inside of a skip with a hammer, which was ‘not a task that he carried out before’.

Liam MacDonald was found with heavy machinery pinned to his chest inside a skip he had been cleaning at Viking Energy’s construction site in Shetland

Viking Energy wind farm construction site (foreground) at Upper Kergord, which is operated by Cheshire-based BAM Nuttall

He added: ‘He was not accompanied, unsupervised and was not provided with further instruction.

‘I was told the chipping of concrete with a hammer would ordinarily have been undertaken by a worker standing outside the skip.’

Mr MacDonald was found motionless by colleagues and was removed from the skip when CPR attempts failed and an on-site defibrillator did not administer any charge.

A post-mortem examination found the cause of death was ‘traumatic asphyxia’. It is not known how the bale arm came to be unsecured. 

The court heard that the bale arm was supposed to be secured by a carabiner and chain but was not in this case. 

The Health and Safety Executive found BAM Nuttall had failed to ensure appropriate control measures were in place.

Solicitor Murdo MacLeod, acting for BAM Nuttall, previously told Inverness Sheriff Court that it was ‘very much a one-off’ incident.

But Sheriff Cruickshank noted that the firm had a ‘number of previous breaches’ of the Health and Safety Act.

The company had 16 contraventions of the act since 1999, he said, with ‘fines ranging from £3,500 to £2,334,000’.

BAM Nuttall has since apologised to the family for the circumstances leading to Mr MacDonald’s death.