HSE Safety Notice: Offshore - Elevated cabin floor windows

View HSE Safety notice in full Offshore - Elevated cabin floor windows

Issue

Potential for falls from height through non-load bearing glass floor windows in elevated cabins due to lack of fixed secure grating.

Outline of the problem

There is a potentially widespread fall from height hazard with elevated cabins that have non-load bearing glass floor windows and removable floor gratings. Removing gratings creates an opening through which workers could fall and sustain major injury.

The glass floor windows may be present in elevated cabins to provide improved visibility for conducting various activities (typically crane operations or drilling).

HSE is investigating one incident and is aware of another outside Great Britain that have resulted in fatal falls from height as a result of removing gratings to enable maintenance and / or cleaning of the glass floor windows.

Similar ‘potential’ situations were identified during routine HSE inspections of offshore installations in an elevated drillers cabin and crane cabin. In both cases, corrective and preventive action of securing the gratings reduced the risk of harm to people.

Please note, industry have published multiple alerts on this subject:

• IADC - International Association of Drilling Contractors published alert 25-9 on the IADC website
• SCiS - High value learning (HVL) crane cabin inspections on Step Change in Safety’s website in January 2026, and
• SCiS - Safety Moment: Hidden Hazard - Crane Cabin Floor Windows crane cabin inspections on Step Change in Safety’s website
• IMCA - Death of seafarer due to fall from crane cabin on the International Marine Contractors Association's website

However, HSE continues to find issues during routine inspections, hence this safety notice has been issued to reinforce the statutory legislative requirements.