Report: Rig Worker Went Through "Fragile" Floor of Crane Cab in Fatal Fall
The UK's offshore safety regulator has determined that a worker on a North Sea jackup rig died last year because a floor grating had been removed for cleaing, the agency said in a notice of violation to the rig operator.
In November 2025, the jackup Valaris 121 was operating at a position off the coast of Aberdeen. On November 14, cleaning occurred in the cab of the port side aft crane on the rig, and unspecified personnel removed a floor grating in order to perform the task. This exposed the "fragile" external floor of the cab, and the grating was not put back in place, according to the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
On the morning of the 14th, rig worker Lee Hulse stepped on the unprotected cab floor. It failed under his feet and he fell through it, plunging more than 80 feet to his death, HSE said.
The agency issued operator Valaris a citation for allegedly failing to "make an assessment of the risks to the health and safety" of employees during the cleaning activity. The notice adds new information to the public record on the nature of the casualty, but it is not the final word: the broader HSE investigation is still in progress.
Hulse, 32, was from Aberdeen and was the father of a young daughter.
It is the second time that a missing deck grating has been potentially implicated in a fatality aboard Valaris 121. In January 2023, worker Jason Thomas disappeared from the rig while it was under tow. A dislodged polymer grating was found in an inspection after the incident, "exposing employees . . . to a risk to their safety by tripping on the displaced grating and/or falling through the subsequent hole in the decking area," inspectors with HSE wrote in an advisory to the operator.
that matters most
Get the latest maritime news delivered to your inbox daily.
At the time, a union official expressed the view that the missing grating was connected with Thomas' disappearance, though no formal investigative finding to that effect has yet been published. "The HSE findings on gratings confirm that our fears were fully verified. We were told early on that it had appeared that Mr. Thomas had gone through a gap in the gratings," RMT offshore union official Jake Molloy told Oil and Gas People in 2023.
Top image: Valaris 121 (Arjan Elmendorp / Vesselfinder)