Trouble in Edinburgh as CityFibre Contractor KNNS Slapped for Unsafe Work

Cityfibre has suspended one of their civil works contractors, KNNS, in the city of Edinburgh (Scotland). The action occurred after a dashcam video emerged that showed one of their fibre optic engineers sitting exposed in a manhole on a busy 30MPH street, with only two small traffic cones for protection.

The incident, which occurred on 27th February 2017 at 1:17pm in the Craiglockhart area, depicts the moment when a Nissan Micra appears to swerve in order to avoid hitting the man who is sat low in a manhole. So low that he is practically invisible to the trailing vehicle, which also conducts a sharp manoeuvre in order to avoid hitting him. The engineer also appears to have neglected his Hard Hat but that probably wouldn’t help vs a face full of Micra.

The footage, which was obtained by Scotland’s Worst Drivers ™ and posted on Edinburgh News, may at least come in handy as a future education tool for contractors under the title – ‘HOW NOT TO DO IT!’. Meanwhile Edinburgh City Council has condemned the case and requested that Cityfibre carry out a full investigation. The Council also claims that they weren’t notified about the work.

A Spokesman for CityFibre said:

“After an initial investigation, we can confirm that the construction worker shown in the video footage was working for KNNS, a CityFibre contractor.

We have now invoked an immediate stop to all KNNS works conducted on behalf of CityFibre until the incident is fully investigated alongside KNNS management.

CityFibre takes its commitment to the health and safety of its staff, contractors and members of the public extremely seriously.”

Normally most complaints about the work that fibre optic / broadband engineers do tends to be centred around the unwanted disruption or damage that can sometimes be caused by civil works, much of which is often unavoidable. However we rarely see such obvious safety failings. A good contractor will know to setup proper traffic management, clear warnings and ideally some additional protection for themselves.

Just as some context. Cityfibre has recently been busy extending their existing Edinburgh CORE Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) broadband and Ethernet network in Edinburgh to around 150km (here), although the above incident appears to reflect a maintenance visit rather than new construction. KNNS has so far declined to comment.