IMCA informs about an injury where a crewman got his feet trapped under the sliding step of an Ampelmann motion compensated telescopic gangway. The crewman did not sustain any life-threatening injuries.
The incident
A crewman trapped his feet under the sliding step of an Ampelmann motion compensated telescopic gangway. The incident took place during the hours of darkness when he was using the gangway to walk from a W2W (‘walk to work’) vessel to a normally unmanned installation.
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He sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries, resulting in a lost time injury (LTI). The emergency response was activated and he was evacuated to hospital.
According to IMCA, the gap between the sliding step and the fixed part of the gangway on this system was large enough to trap the steel toecap of a regularly sized safety shoe/boot.
Probable cause
IMCA identified the following as key contributors to the accident:
- There was no specific design criteria for the gap between the sliding step and the fixed part of the gangway, nor was there an absolute norm for the monitoring of the gap;
- There was insufficient lighting on the gangway which resulted in a lack of awareness of the location and movement of the sliding step;
- The gangway induction video did not generate sufficient awareness regarding the potential hazard of the movement of the sliding step and its associated pinch points.
Lessons learned
Ampelmann learnt that despite its systems being designed and tested as safe, more rigorous standards, controls and checks are need to deal with the risks about with the sliding step.
In addition, the sliding step is well marked, but the markings are not clearly visible at night. Better lighting will increase awareness of the location of the moving sliding step and its pinch points.
After that, the following corrective actions were taken:
- Reassessment of engineering specification of the gap in production, and implement maintenance procedure for regular monitoring of gap;
- Improve the existing safety video by increasing the emphasis on the sliding step and the associated pinch points;
- Increase the night-time visibility of the sliding step on both existing and future systems:retrofit gangway lighting to the existing fleet
include gangway lighting on future gangway designs.
