Manhole where boy died had been covered weeks earlier, inquiry told

A manhole on a building site where a ten-year-old boy lost his life had been covered with a “ballast bag” weighing up to a tonne a few weeks before his death, an inquiry has heard.

Shea Ryan died on July 16, 2020 when he climbed through an unsecured fence on a building site in Drumchapel, Glasgow, and fell 20ft down a manhole shaft.

On day three of a fatal accident inquiry, Glasgow Sheriff Court was shown photographs of the manhole, called MH22, with a ballast bag on top of it shortly before the takeover of the site by construction firm RJ McLeod.

It had been built by construction firm ABV on the Garscadden Burn Area (GBA) on the site which was handed over to RJ McLeod on July 3, 2020.

The images were contained in email exchanges leading up to the handover between ABV and RJ McLeod, and ABV and a subcontracted tunnelling firm.

Katherine Metcalfe, representing ABV, asked Stuart Laurence, who had been assistant site manager on the date of the incident, to identify the manhole with a bag on top in one of the photos.

“Do you think that may be MH22 next to the fence line, Mr Laurence?,” she asked.

Mr Laurence agreed that it was.

The emails also contained discussion of ABV materials being moved out of the site in advance of the takeover by RJ McLeod, including pipes, topsoil and excavated material.

One email of June 30, in which an ABV official was asking the tunnelling subcontractor to move some material, included two photographs of the site with red circles around items that needed to be moved.

In one photo was some pipes and the other showed the ballast bag – labelled a “bag of Grano”, a kind of sand – on top of a manhole.

The inquiry heard the manhole shown in the second photo was “probably” MH22

The inquiry was also shown a police photo of MH22, showing a concrete structure topped with a square metal lid, without a bag on top.

The lid had been pushed to one side, revealing a hole that David Swanney, representing Shea’s mother Joanne Ferguson, described as the “access opening”.

The inquiry heard MH22 was one of two ABV-constructed manholes on the site, which formed part of work the firm had done for Scottish Water, and it was linked to the other manhole, MH21, by a deep pipe.

Between July 3 and the date of the incident, the inquiry heard, RJ McLeod had been installing a pipe running “perpendicular” to that linking MH21 and MH22, but at a shallower depth.

Mr Laurence was asked whether RJ McLeod workers had opened MH22 at any point, but he said he did not know.

Mr Swanney asked him whether the workers might have opened it to visually “check the depth of the ABV pipe” to ensure their own pipe did not interfere with it.

The civil engineer said the depth of each pipe was marked on drawings so it would not have been necessary, but “someone might have opened it up off their own back”.

The inquiry also heard there were other, older manholes on the GBA, and Mr Laurence was asked whether any of these had been opened between July 3 and Shea’s death.

He initially said no, as they were not close to RJ McLeod’s workings.

However Mr Swanney put it to him that the inquiry may hear evidence from an excavator operator that an “existing manhole” in another area of the GBA had been opened.

At this Mr Laurence changed his answer, accepting a manhole on another part of the site had been opened to allow some work to be carried out.

Mr Swanney asked him: “Did you just forget that, Mr Laurence?”

Mr Laurence replied: “It was four years ago.”

Mr Swanney also questioned Mr Laurence on why no action had been taken to secure MH22 when RJ McLeod took over the site on July 3, 2020.

He quoted from a risk assessment relating to “prospective” manholes that RJ McLeod would build in the GBA, which stated, he said, that when opened, manholes should have “barriers around the access opening”.

He also reminded the inquiry it was RJ McLeod policy to place a ballast bag weighing between half-a-tonne and a tonne on unfinished manholes, and to fence them off.

He queried why these safety measures were not applied to MH22 when RJ McLeod took over the site, given that MH22 was the same type of manhole as those the firm would be constructing on the site.

Mr Swanney said: “They’re pretty much the same but the policy for RJ McLeod-built manholes is ‘we’ll put a ballast bag on top and a fence around it if the lid’s not secure’.

“But for MH22, which you knew was on the GBA site, and which you knew the lid was not secure, the policy was ‘we’ll leave it because it’s not ours’?”

Mr Laurence replied: “It wasn’t a policy. It wasn’t considered.”

The civil engineer also confirmed to the inquiry the risk assessment he had prepared of the GBA on July 6 made no reference to the risk of unauthorised access by members of the public.

Mr Swanney asked if this meant “there are no control measures to address that risk?”

Mr Laurence agreed.

The inquiry continues.