The only western construction worker killed in the building of World Cup stadiums in Qatar was provided with substandard equipment by managers who should have known the risks of a “downright dangerous” environment, a British coroner has said.

The Guardian reported. 

Zac Cox, 40, died in January 2017 after he fell 40 metres (131ft) from rigging when a catwalk he was helping to install at the Khalifa stadium in Doha collapsed. The accident occurred after lever hoist equipment failed, causing part of the platform on which Cox and a colleague were working to fall.

The coroner, Veronica Hamilton-Deeley, told Cox’s inquest in Brighton on Tuesday: “Many managers knew and should have known they were effectively requiring a group of their workers to rely on potentially lethal equipment.”

She said the changes introduced to speed up the installation of the catwalks were “chaotic, unprofessional, unthinking and downright dangerous”.

Hamilton-Deeley added that “a perfect storm of events” led to Cox’s death, including a decision by the contractors to speed up the building of the stadium’s roof. That move required the use of additional lever hoists that a fellow construction worker told the inquest were only worthy of the rubbish bin. 

The coroner said: “If you cut to the quick, the root cause of the accident was that the workers were being asked to use equipment that was not fit for purpose. Horribly simple, really.”

Documents submitted to the inquest included an incident investigation report prepared by the contractors, which acknowledged that the lever hoists did not have up-to-date safety certificates and that the health and safety system was not followed.