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18 June 2025

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Tower crane section dropped at Midland Met Hospital

10 Apr 19 Investigations are taking place into a crane accident at a Balfour Beatty site in the West Midlands yesterday.

A tower crane section was dropped while being dismantled on the new £600m Midland Metropolitan Hospital that is under construction in Smethwick.

A 20-metre section of crane fell onto a flat roof of the building.

Part of a crane has collapsed onto a roof structure at a £600 million new hospital being built in Smethwick. West Midlands Fire Service was called to the scene at around 11.40am but there were no injuries reported.

A Balfour Beatty statement said: “We can confirm that an incident took place on our Midland Metropolitan Hospital site on 9th April 2019 whereby a section of crane fell whilst being dismantled.

“T³ó±ð health and safety of the public and our workforce is always our primary concern and we can confirm that no one was hurt as a result of this incident. The surrounding area was immediately secured and works have now ceased on site while the crane section is safely removed, after which works will resume.â€

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It concluded: “An investigation is on-going into the cause and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.â€

Work on the Midland Met Hospital came to a halt in January 2018 when main contractor Carillion went into liquidation.

In October Balfour Beatty was awarded a £10m+ enabling works contract to repair weather damage that the building had suffered since January and to prepare the building for completion of construction. A contract for completion of main works has yet to be awarded.

Under Carillion, the hospital was being built with the assistance of five Wolff flat-top tower cranes, on hire from rental company HTC Wollfkran, owned by the Swiss/German manufacturer Wolffkran. It appears as though it was one of these whose dismantling went wrong.

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