People Machine Interface - Forklift

Incident Date: 03/01/2019

Incident Description: Employee was driving forklift down the ramp into the Non-Ferrous warehouse from the Inventory Scale area. The employee was in the reverse motion to descend down the ramp into the building with nothing on the fork attachments. As the operator descended down the ramp they began to raise the forks in the air, roughly 4-5 feet. As the mast extended to this the height the secondary cylinders for lifting began to engage allowing the top portion of the fork mounting to be exposed above the mast. This portion of the fork mounting made impact with the building as the employee attempted to drive through the doorway. The impact dislodged a header Steel I-beam from the top of the doorway which subsequently caused the roll-down door to be dislodged from its mounting into the block wall. Damage to block wall caused pieces of cinder block to strike the forklift, but luckily not the operator. The impact of these block pieces caused damage to the dashboard and LED interface screen of the forklift.

Corrective Action: Safety Stand Down and re-training for all mobile equipment operators.