The potential hazard posed by a fragile floor surface on the top floor of an office building in Dublin had been identified 15 months before a telecom subcontractor fell to his death from the area, an inquest has heard.
John McCann (62) died after falling 24 metres down a ventilation shaft at the Irish headquarters of engineering consultancy firm, Ove Arup and Partners, at Ringsend Road, Dublin 4 on September 23rd, 2019.
A sitting of Dublin District Coroner’s Court on Wednesday heard the married father of seven fell down six floors of the building to its basement level after stepping onto a surface that looked like a concrete floor but which consisted of just insulation and fire-resistant material around 60mm in depth.
An inspector with the Health and Safety Authority, Kevin Broderick, told the hearing that a “do not enter” sign erected near the fragile surface was “totally inadequate.”
The inquest heard that Mr McCann of Cuckoo Cottage, Donard, Co Wicklow, was working as a supervisor for Total Splicing Solutions of Kilmainham which had been subcontracted to oversee the installation of fibre optic cables in the building.
Mr Broderick said control measures had been discussed about the fragile surface in the plant room at the Ove Arup building during pre-planning for the project which had commenced 15 months earlier.
However, he said different control measures had actually been put in place with their adequacy never reviewed.
Mr Broderick said such measures had also not been communicated to subcontractors and Ove Arup staff who had never accessed the area of the fragile surface prior to the fatal incident.
He described signage erected in the area as “minimal and inadequate.”
Mr Broderick told the coroner, Aisling Gannon, that the warning barrier used was like what one finds in a supermarket to alert people to “wet floors.”
“It’s easily removed, very lightweight and not secured,” he said.
Small surface
Mr Broderick noted a colleague of the deceased had also stood on the same surface just before Mr McCann but escaped injury because he was “small in stature.”
In reply to questions from the coroner, he said such a surface should be at least 150mm thick in order to meet fire regulations which would enable it to have a load factor of 200kg per square metre.
The inspector said the HSA had issued Ove Arup with an improvement notice following the incident and the company had taken actions to make the surface more secure including increased use of secured signs and painting it yellow with the warning “fragile surface.”
Mr Broderick noted that Ove Arup had subsequently conducted a review of all its buildings globally and he agreed with the coroner that the company had provided “a very comprehensive response” to what had happened.
Following Mr McCann’s death, Mr Broderick said the HSA had also begun a process with duty holders in the industry to examine the issue of hazards posed by fragile surfaces in buildings as there had been other cases of “near misses.”
In earlier evidence, one of Mr McCann’s colleagues, Ian Moore, described how he had stepped over the fragile surface in the building’s plant room on its sixth floor just before Mr McCann did in order to point out where a cable could be found.
Mr Moore said he removed a small plastic barrier to access the area which was “easily moved.”
He said Mr McCann moved towards him and there was “a scared scream” as he fell through the floor.
Mr Moore said his colleague briefly touched his leg as he disappeared through the opening.
He recalled being unable to see where Mr McCann had gone as there was dust everywhere.
Mr Moore told the coroner that he had not regarded the sign he had moved as indicating there was any hazard in the area.
“There should have been a structured thing to stop you going through,” he said.
Another Total Splicing Solutions employee, Vincent McGrane, also described his shock at how Mr McCann “disappeared through the floor straight in front of me.”
Stephen Mulhaire, a former Ove Arup employee, who had brought Mr McCann and his colleagues to the plant room, recalled how they had gone from floor to floor in the building to try and find where the victim had ended up.
Ventilation shaft
The inquest heard members of Dublin Fire Brigade had to drill a hole in a wall of the basement level to recover the injured man.
Sergeant Diarmaid Morris said Mr McCann was found lying on his back with no obvious sign of injury.
He gave evidence of how he was told the deceased had tried to grab the knee of his colleague’s trousers as he fell straight down the ventilation shaft.
However, the inquest heard he was unresponsive and was formally pronounced dead at the scene at 3.23pm.
Sgt Morris confirmed that a “do not enter” sign had been attached to a duct behind the opening.
A son of the deceased, Barney McCann, gave evidence of formally identifying his father’s body to gardaí and described how he learnt of his father’s death by a phone call from one of his brothers.
Mr McCann, who came originally from Stratford-on-Slaney, Co Wicklow had recently moved back to the area having lived in Greenfort Gardens, Clondalkin for many years.
The inquest heard the results of a postmortem showed he had died from acute traumatic injuries consistent with a fall from a height.
A jury of five women and five men returned a verdict of death by misadventure at the end of a three-hour hearing.
Counsel for Ove Arup, Brian Gageby BL, extended his deepest sympathy to Mr McCann’s family on behalf of the company, while the coroner also offered her condolences to a large group of the victim’s children, relatives, friends and colleagues who had attended the inquest.
Ove Arup was fined €750,000 at a sitting of Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in June 2023 after the company was convicted of two breaches of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 in relation to Mr McCann's death.
It pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the safety of non-employees at a place of work on the day in question.
The company also admitted failing to ensure the provision and maintenance of health, safety and welfare at work, particularly in relation to the fragile floor surface of the plant room.
In a victim impact statement, Mr McCann’s family said the pain and hurt of losing their father was “just unbearable.”
At the same court hearing, Mr Broderick criticised Ove Arup’s “laissez-faire approach” to health and safety over its failure to follow through on risk assessment.
The court heard that the company had accepted responsibility for Mr McCann’s death and had wanted to make a donation of around €40,000 in his name to a charity he supported.
