Kier has been fined £4.4m, after twice striking overhead powerlines and bringing cables down onto the M6 motorway.
In the first incident, the workers were clearing tarmac from the hard shoulder and loading a truck with a digger. As they moved the truck along, with an attached loading bucket raised, it struck and severed a 11kV overhead power line that landed in the motorway and in a nearby field. The company failed to immediately tell Scottish Power, which meant the cable was reenergised several times while it was lying on the motorway and vehicles were passing.
In the second incident, a crane struck an overhead cable which landed on the motorway and the powerline was then hit and snapped by an oncoming lorry.
There was no task-specific Risk Assessment available for the workers and they were simply unaware of the overhead hazards.
Fortunately, no-one was injured in either incident, but the outcome could have been very different.
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