Staff Reports
WC Monitor
12/11/2015
The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) has sent a letter of enforcement to Hanford Site services and infrastructure contractor Mission Support Alliance. The letter questions the contractor’s response to a May 2015 accident involving a crane rigger, but imposes no requirements on MSA. Steven Simonson, director of the EA Office of Enforcement, said in the letter that no further enforcement activity, such as a fine, was being considered at this time. He said the letter was intended to convey concerns with MSA’s management of the activity involved in the accident, awareness of safety requirements for the work, overreliance on administrative controls to protect worker safety, and the adequacy of corrective actions to prevent recurrence. MSA said it was working with the DOE Richland Operations Office to address specifics of the letter.
On May 1, a rigger was observing the respooling of wire cable for a 135-ton Grove crane. The worker was positioned on an elevated platform facing the cane spool winch drum and had one gloved hand on the crane’s cable guard in alignment with the path of the wire cable anchor. The anchor caught the rigger’s hand as the drum rotated, causing cuts that required 25 stitches.
Simonson criticized MSA for relying solely on administrative controls to protect the rigger, which exposed the worker to the pinch point hazard. After the accident, engineering controls were identified that could have prevented or significantly reduced the likelihood of the injury, according to his letter. Reliance on administrative controls for the respooling was not consistent with the hierarchy of control requirements in DOE 10 C.F.R. Part 851, Worker Safety and Health Program, which MSA failed to identify as a noncompliance, the letter says.
An automated job hazard analysis addressed general pinch point dangers for the work, but it was not specific to respooling and did not address the configuration of the Grove crane, the enforcement letter says. The crane is one of just two of 21 cranes used by MSA at Hanford with the drum in the position that created the hazard. In addition, the injured worker had general rigging experience but had performed the work he did May 1 only once previously.
The Office of Enforcement found that communication was inadequate among the rigger, spotter, signalman, designated leader, and operator for the work and for a quick response to the incident. Drum rotation continued until the injured worker climbed down from the work platform near the front of the crane and reported the injury to the designated leader, who was at the rear of the crane. “Multiple exposed pinch points presented a potential for catching and trapping an extremity, loose clothing or lanyard that would require quick action by the operator to prevent serious injury or fatality,” the enforcement letter says. MSA resumed respooling the cable about three hours after the accident. Resuming work without identifying and addressing the underlying conditions put additional employees at risk from a now identified hazard, according to Simonson. In addition, evidence that could have helped fully identify causal factors and develop corrective actions was compromised, he said.
