International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) provides lessons learned from an incident where a floor plate fell from the main mast to the deck during a storm.
The incident
At the time there were violent storm force winds of 55 to 60 knots with an 11m swell. A crew member suddenly heard an object falling from above. It landed near the upper deck port forward crane. It was a piece of 50 x 80 cm aluminium plate with 4 holes for securing, weighing about 2Kg. There were no injuries nor property damage.
Probable cause
The four screws securing the floor plate had sheared. The plate was from the mid platform of the mast at the base the Inmarsat dome mast.
The screws had been replaced by a sub-contractor during fabric repairs, just over one year previously, and were found to be too short, and of too poor a quality, to ensure the plate remained secured adequately.
Lessons learned
In order to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future, IMCA informs that the following actions have been taken:
- Re-secured the plate with proper fixings;
- Held a thorough check of all similar plates on deck, especially in areas where this particular sub-contractor had been working, so as to avoid similar potential problem;
- Fed back to the sub-contractor about this near miss, requiring higher attention to quality performance in future work.