Alchemist DB trench death: CDM 2015 lessons and design duties for site engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Alchemist DB Limited has been fined £20,000 plus £5,000 costs at Luton Magistrates Court after 35-year-old labourer Mykhalio Hustei died in October 2021, falling into a rainwater-filled foundation trench on a Bovington High Street flat development. An HSE investigation found criss-crossing excavation footings with no designated safe walkways, workers using unsecured, handrail-free boards and planks that bowed and became slippery in wet weather, and no dedicated site lighting. Only after enforcement did the firm install scaffold-framed walkways over exposed excavations, as required under CDM 2015 Regulation 22(2).
Technical Brief
- Failure mechanism involved an unprotected, rainwater-filled foundation excavation intersecting pedestrian desire lines between accommodation and site.
- HSE investigation treated the intersecting footing trenches as a site-wide fall-from-height hazard, not isolated pits.
- Inspectors recorded ad hoc timber “bridges” that deflected under load, creating instability and trip risk above water.
- Absence of fixed edge protection or trench barriers contravened HSE excavation guidance on guarding open excavations.
- Post-incident remediation used scaffold-framed walkways spanning trenches, providing level access with integrated guardrails.
- Dedicated task lighting was retrofitted after enforcement, addressing night-time visibility of excavation edges and water surfaces.
- Monitoring on comparable sites should include routine inspection of temporary access routes, edge protection integrity and lighting coverage.
Our Take
This trench fatality sits within a sizeable body of UK construction safety coverage in our database – 475 tag‑matched ‘Failure/Safety’ pieces – indicating that HSE enforcement around site controls is now a consistent operational risk for smaller contractors like Alchemist DB Limited.
The use of Regulation 22(2) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 mirrors other recent HSE prosecutions, such as the Ling Developments case in Telford, signalling that inadequate planning and management of temporary works and welfare are increasingly being pursued as standalone offences.
Compared with non‑fatal fall and welfare breaches like the Willow Services and Ling Developments fines, trench‑related fatalities in the United Kingdom tend to attract closer scrutiny from magistrates’ courts, which in practice can mean higher penalties, reputational damage and tighter future oversight for firms involved in groundworks and small urban schemes.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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