Simon Lewis Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 I don't remember hearing about this at the time? Was it simply dwarfed by other news or suppressed because it didn't look good? Company fined £30,000 after metal arch falls on woman at 2012 Olympics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerry davies Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 It was a corporate jolly site and not really what the PR men are calling it, "Wood Wharf Olympic Site". The remit of the works was to transform a previously cleared 1970s warehouse site paved with tarmac into a temporary park with a lifespan of two to four years. Initially the park was a venue to celebrate the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics and it hosted an array of super yachts visiting 2012 events.So it was not "at the Olympics", was probably a privately owned piece of land at Canary Wharf and was being run by people who are sales and marketing people with exhibition experience and limited if any events or outdoor experience.With London getting 4-5,000 999 calls a day during "normal" times it would have been as newsworthy as "Dog Bites Man" at the time. I doubt very much that anyone involved officially with the Games even heard of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Lewis Posted February 4, 2014 Author Share Posted February 4, 2014 Thanks, Kerry - that makes more sense now. Unfortunately, it's still an accident with a temporary structure that is widely used in "our" industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete McCrea Posted February 4, 2014 Share Posted February 4, 2014 However, I would think a lot of us here see that first picture and straight away wince at the lack of ballast/support to the arch…. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
top-cat Posted February 5, 2014 Share Posted February 5, 2014 Unfortunately, it's still an accident with a temporary structure that is widely used in "our" industry. It's not the big risk everyone seems to think it is. There is a wide belief that because Michael Mouse and his band of monkeys assemble some half rate truss arch and it falls over and hurts somebody, that HSE will say "Oh, that truss stuff, that's dangerous that is, can't be having that" and ban it. They are reasonably good at seeing that every week, many tons of truss head up into the roofs of the O2, Wembley, NEC, Earls Court, etc etc and incidents are extremely few and far between. They can see that truss is a perfectly safe and reasonable material and just because one prat with no structures experience who has no moral qualms with endangering the good health of the public in order to line their pockets that bit deeper erects a piece of half circle truss bought from some seedy internet DJ shop on little more than a pair of parasol bases, this is not a reflection on the rigging industry as a whole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerry davies Posted February 5, 2014 Share Posted February 5, 2014 Thanks, Kerry - that makes more sense now. Unfortunately, it's still an accident with a temporary structure that is widely used in "our" industry.Totally agree Simon and it makes a good little exercise for students in working out wind forces and turning moments on the Trilite. I would play a little game with students making them calculate approximate forces and suggesting remedies before I told them what was in the text. It had a nice big banner attached to it as well. I maintain that these things are not accidents but experiments carried out by ignorant fools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Lewis Posted February 6, 2014 Author Share Posted February 6, 2014 It's not the big risk everyone seems to think it is. No - and I wouldn't want to suggest that. However, neither the HSE (however short staffed they might be) or local councils blind to reported incidents, changes and trends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trussmonkey Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 again (as with other higher profile outdoor structures in America)it all comes down to lack of respect for the elements and what they can do. im my humble opinion ALL outdoor structures should come with a proper set of calcs that have been produced by a structural engineer. these calcs should detail max wind allowable, ballast needed, and an idea position of said ballast. along with the calcs should be a risk management plan which should include a tiered plan detailing what the control measures would be should the wind reach a given level . the company putting the structure up should specify that in the even of nearing the max wind speed they are within their rights to lower the structure. if that isnt possible then that should be allowed for in the calcs. until companies realize that they can not just put something up outside with what they think is a suitable amount of ballast then things will not change. on the flip side there really needs to be greater industry regulation on this sort of erection...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart91 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 The problem is awareness. For some reason punters seem far more likely to mess around with rigging than other trades. For example, a while back I paid a visit to some customers of ours who had acquired a new building. I walked into the room to find their joinery firm trying to hang a ~6m circle of quad truss from the ceiling. They were using dog chain from B&Q, which they had choked round the truss and some purlins above, and were going to use padlocks instead of shackles. The truss was going to be over the audiences heads, and would be home to at least four moving lights. The joiners didn't take too kindly to my intervention, but eventually agreed to go to a rigging shop to buy rated chain and shackles, and I managed to source some half-coupler to eyelet clamps to go on the truss. But I was stunned that, having been asked about it by the customer, they had just gone ahead and guessed their way through the job. None of their choices seemed particularly stupid to a layperson, the customers were quite happy with how the job was proceeding. The same joiners would never have contemplated, say, plumbing in a gas cooker, yet the possible consequences in the event of an accident aren't that different. So the question is - how can it be made clear to people that rigging needs to be done properly, and isn't something that you can just bodge away at and hope for the best? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerry davies Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I agree TM, though would add just one word; there really needs to be greater industry self regulation Most of your first paragraph is covered by the IStructE TDS guidance and law we have enough of. Yesterday the power of weather was all over the TV, the Met Office and services warning the nation not to go near the sea. Come news time her indoors screamed and there on the box was a man taking pictures of the hole in Dawlish from underneath the suspended railway line with concrete sleepers hanging there. Bad enough? Nah, this guy had a 10-12 year old boy alongside him, actively teaching the boy idiocy. Law doesn't prevent stupidity but a culture change might. We can cause that culture change by promoting the "Get a man who can" mantra. Riggers to rig etc. The law helps but behaviour change is more or less down to us all. Become competent ourselves and keep using the word when talking to promoters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart91 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Self regulation is definitely the preferable option, but only works if there is the culture change and customers expect competent people doing the work for them. If the people with the chequebooks go for the cheapest option available and ignore the consequences, cowboy firms will appear to service that need. I have no idea who was actually responsible for the supply and assembly of the truss arch that sparked this thread, but I wonder if there are firms sitting there who had their quotes for the job rejected as being too expensive? They would be entitled to feel vindicated, but that doesn't pay the bills... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xllx Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Self regulation is definitely the preferable option, but only works if there is the culture change and customers expect competent people doing the work for them. If the people with the chequebooks go for the cheapest option available and ignore the consequences, cowboy firms will appear to service that need. I have no idea who was actually responsible for the supply and assembly of the truss arch that sparked this thread, but I wonder if there are firms sitting there who had their quotes for the job rejected as being too expensive? They would be entitled to feel vindicated, but that doesn't pay the bills... I happen to know the company involved ( I sometimes work for them as a freelancer) or at least the one named in the newspaper report. They are not by any means a small fly by night company, and certainly not cheap. They were responsible for a huge amount of branding and wayfinding signage all over the country during the 2012 Olympics. I have no direct knowledge of the job concerned, but I do know that the company's core business is outdoor signage and they do have the experience for this sort of work. Obviously something went wrong in this case, either a miscalculation, a mistake caused by rushing to meet a deadline, or poor workmanship or something else, none of which are excusable, but I think it is unfair to assume this was a cowboy install without actually knowing the full details. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImagineerTom Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 ...unfair to assume this was a cowboy install without actually knowing the full details. Based on the picture in the article linked to, I'm happy to stick my neck out and say it WAS a cowboy install. The structure has NO outriggers, there's no sign of any guy's or bracing system (and if you look at the orientation of the truss you can see it wouldn't be possible to put a proper, balanced set of guys or bracing bars on it so I'm inclined to believe they don't exist) and it was installed in a part of the country that is famously windy, doing quick "fag packet" calculations I'd say that that structure could have been compromised just by one reveler climbing on it. Since one of the most core principles of putting temporary structures in public places is to ensure there's something secondary stopping them from falling over and that at some point at least one member of the public will try and climb it & even ignoring the issues relating to attaching a banner to it (thus making it a sail) or the problem that they admit they were using completely the wrong set of wind-loading calculations, both of which are human-error issues I'm quite happy to state that THAT was a cowboy install. I can appreciate how in the over-stretched heat-of-battle environment of having to deliver lots of branding for a high profile event corners get cut but in this instance there were no surprises and anyone installing or supervising that structure should have been able to spot the fundamental flaws in its implementation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xllx Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Totally agree with you Tom that it was a bad install, my fault for phrasing it badly. I probably should have said company in the last line not install. I was trying to point out that it wasn't an inexperienced company that made this mistake. It was not a lowest price, throw it up cheap company as had been suggested in some of the earlier posts, but a specialist signage and branding company that should have known better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azlan Posted February 9, 2014 Share Posted February 9, 2014 The judge made it clear he didnt feel that the use of truss was at fault, but rather he held the company accountable as they had apparently failed to suitably risk assess or perform loading calculations fir the job. The link about it over on dodgy technicians indicates that the risk assessment supplied was actually for the errection of a flagpole, which is a very different structure Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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