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A civil engineering firm and a heating company have each been fined £1m after a worker was crushed to death by a 840kg pipe.
Sheffield Crown Court heard how on 10 December 2015, 36-year-old David Beresford was employed by R K Civil Engineers Ltd and was working at the EON Renewable Energy Plant at Blackburn Meadows in Sheffield.
He was one of two workers unloading large heating pipes, each measuring 12m long and weighing 840kg, from a trailer to place them into stillage containers at the site.
The pipes were being lifted and moved using an excavator and were incorrectly stacked above the top edge of the stillages.
During the positioning of the pipes, two rolled off and fell into a gap between the two stillages.
Beresford was standing within the gap and the second pipe fell onto him.
R K Civil Engineers of the Chancery, Spring Gardens, Manchester was found guilty of breaching Section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined £1m.
The company went into administration in June 2016.
Meanwhile R K District Heating Ltd of the Manor House, Eccleshall Road South, Sheffield, was found guilty of breaching Section 3 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined £1m.
The business went into voluntary liquidation in March last year.
The judge also ordered that costs of £17,271 are to be repaid. The arrangements will need to be agreed between the two defendants.
HSE inspector Mark Welsh commented: “This was a wholly avoidable incident, caused by the failure of both companies to follow safe systems of work, and a failure to identify the risks.
“This tragic incident led to the avoidable death of a young man. There was a lack of planning for the work carried out and, as a result, inadequate controls put in place.”
