HS2 crane disassembly incident: CDM safety lessons for project engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
HS2 raised concerns about contractor safety practices only months before a “serious” crane disassembly incident in September on the high‑speed rail project. The event involved a crane being taken down on an HS2 worksite, prompting investigation into lifting plans, exclusion zones and contractor competence in line with CDM Regulations. Engineers can expect closer scrutiny of temporary works design, crane stability checks and method statements for assembly/disassembly operations across HS2 packages.
Technical Brief
- For other UK megaprojects, the case is likely to tighten scrutiny of contractor-led lifting operations under CDM.
Our Take
HS2’s recent milestones on the Chiltern tunnel and Delta junction (both covered in January pieces in our database) mean crane and heavy-lift operations are now concentrated on complex interface works, where disassembly and relocation risks typically rise rather than fall late in the programme.
Among the 527 Infrastructure stories and 1441 tag‑matched ‘Safety’/‘Projects’ items in our coverage, HS2 appears unusually often, signalling that its scale and political visibility are driving more formalised learning loops between incidents and method refinement than on most UK rail schemes.
The earlier HS2 ‘green tunnel’ article notes a deliberate copy‑and‑refine approach to construction sequencing; a serious crane disassembly failure suggests contractors may need similarly standardised, repeatable lift‑planning and demobilisation procedures across the route, not just for tunnelling methods.
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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