Anonymised accounts of incidents, near misses and jobs that did not go to plan — and what the profession took from them.
Published by the Institute · reviewed
As an industry, demolition can do more to talk about lessons learned: before a project, during it, and after it. The knowledge exists — it sits with the engineers who were there — but it rarely travels beyond the firms involved, and so the same failures recur across the sector.
This library exists to move that knowledge. Every entry is anonymised before it is reviewed: the submitter’s identity is held separately from the record and never published with it. No firms are named, no projects are identifiable, and nothing here is an apportionment of blame.
Two kinds of entry. Entries marked HSE are drawn from the Health and Safety Executive’s published prosecutions and enforcement notices, rewritten as lessons without names and linked to the original. The rest are members’ own accounts, anonymised and reviewed before publication — contribute one.
Most of what goes wrong is decided long before the attachment reaches the wall — in the survey, the sequence and the assumptions behind them.
Browse by category
Structural collapse & stabilityTemporary worksAsbestos & hazardous materialsPlant & attachmentsExclusion zonesServices & isolationWorking at heightSurvey & pre-demolition information
A worker suffered multiple back fractures, a punctured lung and a broken leg while dismantling a steel event structure. The contractor and a director were prosecuted after HSE found the work had not been properly planned or safely carried out.
A worker was seriously injured falling from a tipping bucket being used to gain height while dismantling pipework. The principal contractor was fined for failing to properly manage contractors and site safety.
A worker was ejected from a scissor lift when a series of cleanroom wall panels collapsed during dismantling. He died from his injuries, and the contractor was fined following an investigation into inadequate risk assessment.
Contributing factors
No suitable and sufficient risk assessment
No safe removal sequence for panels
Unprotected working position on scissor lift
Reliance on adjoining panels for stability not assessed
Demolition work at a site in Staffordshire was stopped after asbestos was discovered, but an unlicensed company and individual were then brought in to manage the clean-up instead of a licensed asbestos contractor. An investigation found the demolition had not been properly planned or managed, leading to prosecution of two companies and a site manager.
A 19-year-old worker died after falling through a fragile garage roof during demolition work where no measures had been taken to prevent or mitigate a fall. The contractor responsible for the work was jailed for 12 months.
Workers dismantling wall panelling disturbed asbestos-containing material that had not been identified in earlier surveys. The contractor was fined for failures in assessment, training and emergency arrangements.
A contractor continued unsafe working-at-height and demolition-related activity after the regulator had issued action to stop it, putting workers at risk of serious injury. The matter resulted in a suspended sentence and a requirement to carry out unpaid work.
During structural alterations to a house, removal of load-bearing elements led to a roof collapse that destroyed the property and injured three workers. The contractor received a suspended custodial sentence and the homeowner was left with a substantial rebuild bill.
Each published entry sets out the context of the works, the condition of the structure as found, the planned sequence and the point at which the plan and the reality diverged. It is written by or with the engineer involved, and reviewed by the Institute before publication.
The engineering
Where the lesson turns on a technical point — a load path, a temporary works assumption, a plant selection, an isolation that was not proved — the entry sets that point out properly, with the reasoning. This is the part that stops the same failure happening on someone else’s site, and it is the part that is usually missing from how the industry talks about incidents.
What changed
What the team did differently afterwards, and what the Institute would recommend more widely. Where an entry has implications for published guidance, that is stated.
Contribute
Submit a lesson
If something on one of your projects taught you a lesson worth passing on, the Institute wants it. Submissions are anonymised before review — your identity is held separately from the record and is never published with it, and you decide whether the Institute may come back to you with questions.
You do not need to be a member to contribute, and you do not need to have all the answers. A near miss that was caught is as useful as an incident that was not.
Published Institute information only. It cannot assess a live project or approve a method.
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