Lucky?

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Well Lucky or stupid!!! you decide!!!

No sympathy for him really! Yeah blame the company, easy way out i reckon,but surly he should of read, understood and signed method statements and risk assessments if he was an outside contractor for northgate.

First think I'd want to prove to myself was there was nothing where I was digging!

Opinions???

 
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Im not sure why the company was soley to blame for this?  

I also thought the 'detailed' plans from dno were as useful as a choclate tea pot.

And the tool to use would have been a CAT.  

Still poor fella, get well soon.  

 
I'm not sure if he was lucky or unlucky. If the poor guy was a labourer digging holes for fence posts I doubt he would have the skill set to accurately read a map/drawing let alone accurately detect and identify MV cables. I agree his company or employer should have been responsible for surveying and the supply authority should be responsible for keeping accurate records.

 
The owner of the land got done in court, not the main contractor or the sub contractor as far as I can tell?

 
2 years ago we did a block of flats in London docklands that had a substation in the basement, fed by 11kv underground lines. I was amazed these cables ( which are red and about 75mm  external size) were 'buried' less than  100mm under the pavement & then the same depth under the  tarmac drive till the building.

 
20 plus years ago I did a shop refit on Chancery Lane in that London.

In the cellar, clipped across the ceiling, direct in from the road was a huge FO SWA cable, but it had no sheath...just the SWA. We had no idea what it was so we got a be-suited gibbon from the LEB down to have a look. After a look at some drawings and a bit of genital scratching he announced that " it is probably dead, just cut it off "

I passed my hacksaw to him and told him to carry on...he declined my offer!

As far as I know it is still there. We painted it orange, covered it in labels, marked it on all drawings, put a notice next to the DB with a copy of the drawing AND a couple of pics of the cable with a copy of that days newspaper next to it to give some indication of date. Never did find out what it was for

" treat it as being live because one day it will be...and you might not,"

 
Talking about cutting out redundant cables, We refurbed an office in Mayfair and there was a large old GPO rack in the basement with thousands of cores connected in. The owner had a new telephone service brought in as his various building were linked & we had wired a new Cat 5 system throughout the property. We were instructed to remove all the old equipment. We removed every single bit of cable we could (for scrap) and it turned out this rack was still in use feeding the entire block of 5 streets. We had cut off hundreds if not thousands of lines . After a lot of discussions between BT and the building owners, BT had to rent a cupboard in the basement to reinstate the rack.

The building owners really shafted BT big time, as they had to get the service back on pronto. It transpired there was an old agreement that ran out more than 30 years earlier that the GPO had never reapplied for.

 
Ive read the HSEs version of this and it still doesnt make sense to me.  So my customers have to give me cable plans from thre DNO before I can start work?  What about home owners?!  What about my H&S responsibilities to myself? 

 
They have been done under CDM even though there was a main contractor, i cant get my head around this.  Why is the land owner responsible when the main contractor isnt?

 
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