We’ve no idea how boy fell to his death, says construction firm

The director of a construction firm has “no idea” how a ten-year-old boy got on to the building site where he died after falling down a manhole shaft, a Fatal Accident Inquiry has been told.
Shea Ryan died in July 2020 when he climbed through an unsecured fence on a building site in Drumchapel, Glasgow, and fell 20ft down a manhole shaft.
The inquiry at Glasgow sheriff court opened with a reading of a statement from Shea’s mother, Joanne Ferguson.
She said that before her son’s death it was “well known” that children had been able to get on to the site, and she wanted to know why no action had been taken to prevent this. She said that she also wanted to know who uncovered the manhole, when they did so, and why it had been left uncovered.
“We miss Shea every single day. My heart’s broken, and my life will never be the same again,” she said.
The inquiry heard evidence from Graeme Clark, joint managing director of RJ McLeod, which was the principal contractor for the construction work at the site, part of a flood alleviation project.
Clark told the inquiry that he had “no idea” how Shea was able to get on to the site, or how he had gained access to the manhole.
“He shouldn’t have been able to get in to the site. I have no idea how he was able to get in,” Clark said.
Robert Van Beek, who was a contract manager at RJ McLeod at the time, later told the inquiry that, looking back, the security measures put in place after the incident should have been there from the start. This included CCTV around the perimeter fence, motion sensors and a process for formally documenting inspections of the site fence, the inquiry was told.
Clark said that, “as far as I was aware from the documents”, there had been a cover on the manhole weighing about 78kg, which, he said, would have been “difficult” for a ten-year-old to lift.
He agreed with Nicola Gillespie, the advocate depute, that the cover “must have been moved somehow” for Shea to be able to access the shaft. He added: “We had no knowledge of any child on that site up to the date of the incident itself.”
Clark said that he first became aware of the incident at about 9am on July 17, when he received a phone call from the assistant site manager.
He said that he immediately travelled to the site, which he had not visited before.
“I was there to ensure I was giving support to people, because of the staff on site that day, and hopefully to gain knowledge of the sequence of events that led to the accident,” he said.
He told the inquiry he inspected the fencing and that the only damage he could see was caused by emergency vehicles arriving at the site that morning.
“The fencing was in place apart from where it had been damaged by the ambulance and the police and fire rescue authorities,” he said.
This area of fencing, he said “had been badly mangled and put to one side. It was, from memory, near the play park”.
Asked about the security arrangements in place at the time of the incident, he said there had been “industry-standard fencing” around the site and CCTV at the site office.
He added that a health and safety officer with responsibility for a number of the company’s sites — it had 23 projects in operation at the time — would also have inspected the site about once a week.
Clark said that these security measures would have been decided on after a risk assessment by senior site officials before work started in March 2020, and that a number of changes to security arrangements were made after Shea’s death. These included the installation of an extra layer of fencing at the part of the site next to the play park, CCTV on the perimeter fence, motion sensors and the securing of manhole covers with ballast bags.
He added that a formal process for recording damage to perimeter fencing identified during daily inspections was introduced.
The advocate depute asked Clark whether the decision to install extra fencing in the area close to the play park was “because you thought the existing fencing wasn’t good enough?”
Denying this, he said that the fencing had been adequate under the risk assessment carried out when the site was set up, and that they now had “additional knowledge” that made extra fencing, along with the other measures, appropriate.
Gillespie pressed him, saying he had said he had not known how Shea got into the site, “but immediately you thought you’d put extra fencing in the area next to the play park?”
Clark responded that the company had been aware of the play park when the original security plan was drawn up, and that it “had a contractual obligation from Glasgow city council not to fence it off”.
When asked why this was, he replied: “You’ll have to ask Glasgow city council.”
David Swanney, representing Shea’s mother, pressed Clark on apparent failings in the company’s risk-assessment process, including the failure to record fence inspections in the period before her son’s death.
He pointed out that damage to the fencing would have been a “sign members of the public were accessing the site”, in breach of the company’s legal responsibilities.
He added that damaged fencing “increases opportunity for members of the public to access the site”.
He put it to Clark: “Do you, on behalf of your company, accept your failures led to the death of Shea Ryan?”
Clark initially said “no”, but later clarified that the company did accept responsibility for his death in respects of failures in its risk-assessment processes. The company was fined £860,000 last year for failing to secure the construction site.
The Fatal Accident Inquiry into Shea’s death is expected to last until September 9.