Who Do You Think Was To Blame For This Accident?

Last week, a meeting was called for the project engineer , operations and maintenance department, HR assistant and me.

This time, since the HR officer was absent, I have to take charge of the meeting.

The ceiling of the ground floor of one of the company’s building which was contracted to a construction firm went down , while the electrical section of our operations and management department were finishing the wirings for the said place. It is to be occupied by a new tenant , while the second to third floor was occupied already by a business processing office.

I want the meeting to be just brief because from experience meetings like this will take time because those involved would be made to speak what their involvement were.

Thus, at the start of the meeting I told everyone that the meeting was called not to blame anyone but to find a solution to the problem once it is determined as to what really happened.

The electrical section head said that while they were doing the wirings and some were up in the scaffolding they put up where they can stand to do the wirings it suddenly fell down on them.

The part that was hit was that part where two electricians were up in the scaffolding doing the wirings. Thus, the said two personnel when the ceiling went down were hit. The others escaped.

The next to tell what he knows was the security officer, who told everyone that since their part is to secure the safety of everyone, he told the men to put on their hard hats to which was not followed.

Thus, the heads of the two personnel was hit, luckily they weren’t hurt much. They suffered some scratches and of course their head was knocked on by the ceiling that fell down because they don’t have hard hats.

The next to tell his piece was the project engineer.

He told everyone that he was telling the electrical department to already do the wirings before the contractor would let his men finally seal the ceiling. But since the electrical department was also busy that time, they weren’t able to do it during those times.

Thus, the workers put up the ceiling without the wirings yet and when the electrical sections were already putting up the wirings , this happened.

With what happened, the project engineer said that it could be that the hangers weren’t all put up in the ceiling because the BPO on the second floor doesn’t like the banging for the hangers and they were given a schedule to do it . But then, the workers weren’t available on those schedule. So, they sealed the ceiling, forgetting to put on the hangers.

But this was the conclusion only of the project engineer.

To this, I pointed out that this incident was a blessing in disguise actually .

Why? Because hadn’t it been for the pounding of the electrical personnel when they did the wirings, it will not be discovered that the ceiling isn’t sturdy. It should have been that it is sturdy , that it can bear the weight of one or two persons, if ever there will be a repair to be done for the wirings inside the ceiling.

To end the meeeting, I requested the project engineer to point it out from the contractor to rectify and fortify the ceiling. To this, everyone agreed and was happy that there was no blaming done but just a speedy solution to the problem.

But on second thought, the one to be blamed is really the project engineer since it means he didn’t inspect the ceiling works done when it was finished since it was after all already paid half .

Sometimes, a thing happens really to point out something that should be corrected.

Note : Picture is from google