SIR MOIR LOCKHEAD SAFETY AWARD
Having been apprenticed to
British Railways, Cooper
worked at lift company Kone
Marryatt Scott as a sta engineer
and at British Engine as an engineer
surveyor. During that time, he has
served as expert witness, accident
investigator and has written two
books on the topic as well as
engineering guidance.
He is also the chair of the trust
that runs the annual Lift and
Escalator Symposium, usually held at
Northampton University, which was
set up a decade ago to avoid the cost
involved with previous gatherings
of academics in the lift industry.
All of the research presented is
peer-reviewed by a panel; the 12th
annual event is scheduled for 21-22
September 2022. Informationsharing,
such as safety alerts, is vital
to lift and escalator safety. Cooper
says: “In the past, we’ve had cracks
“All in all, research and innovation
leads to safety”
in gearboxes. The information comes
out through the trade association
to the industry, and all lifts and
escalators can be checked to make
sure that any issues are avoided.
Fortunately, the occurrence of
accidents in the industry is fairly
small. The interesting thing is that
lifts tend to injure those working on
them, whereas escalators tend to
hurt their passengers.
DAVE COOPER
CEO OF LIFT AND
ESCALATOR CONSULTANCY
LECS UK AND A
VISITING PROFESSOR AT
NORTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY
“It might be that passengers
that don’t know how to safely
use escalators, and that leads
to entrapment injuries. Some
accidents are down to horseplay
by young kids. A lot of accidents
have a component of contributory
negligence of passengers. It is rare
to get component failure, but it does
happen. I have done two principal
areas of research on escalators: first,
shopping trolleys on escalators,
which a standards committee was
considering – but fortunately backed
down on – which became the basis
for an MSc qualification.
“Up until then, the industry’s
view was that people falling off of
escalators were teenagers that had
a few too many beers and rode on
the handrail. My research covered
a 20-year period in which 44% of
accidents on escalators were found
to involve children under 10 years
old. Now we have different guards
on the sides of escalators to prevent
falls and block access, and we have
incorporated brushes on the sides
to stop step entrapment. All in all,
research and innovation leads to
safety.
“In accidents involving lift
engineers, they will have done
something to get the lift to work:
maybe they have shorted out a
safety component to perform some
work, and then forgotten that they
have done that, and the lift moves
unexpectedly. Very often you find
that accidents involving engineers
are because they have not thought
through the consequences of their
actions.
STUPID MISTAKES
“As an investigator of more than 40
fatalities, sometimes I see an accident
that is so stupid; people didn’t think.
Sometimes I see an accident and I
think, ‘that might have caught me
out’. It makes you think di erently. It
makes you more cautious. It makes
you appreciative of standards. These
are the messages that need to be sent
to the coalface.
“No shortcuts is a given. Also, if
you do something that’s a temporary
thing to overcome a problem, it’s
just that; it’s got to be fixed; it can’t
be left like that. A classic example
of that is the Italian cable car that
ran away, killing 14 passengers in
May 2021. It had a safety component
not in use. Therefore, when it was
needed, it didn’t operate. There
needs to be a mindset that the job is
not just to keep the lift going, but to
keep it going safely.
“For argument’s sake, if it keeps
overheating, don’t short out the
thermistor that stops it tripping
22 www.operationsengineer.org.uk Winter 2021
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