06:12 pm, Wednesday 2 November, 2011

A fatal accident has occurred on a University of Queensland construction site at St Lucia.

A 65-year-old died on Monday when building materials fell from a crane and crushed him.

Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union workplace health and safety co-ordinator Andrew Ramsay said the site foreman was struck by a piece of heavy machinery.

The man, whose name has not been released, was hit by a formwork shutter which workers were attempting to lift by crane.

Mr Ramsay said a lifting point broke on the shutter, causing it to swing into the foreman.

The man’s workmates tried to revive him with CPR. However, he was dead when they arrived at the scene.

Mr Ramsay said work had stopped at the construction site and workers were being counselled by the CFMEU’s Mates in Construction service.

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12:47 pm, Wednesday 26 October, 2011

A 49-year-old man suffered a crushed lung after being injured in a workplace accident in Melbourne’s west last week.

The accident occurred while the man was operating a cherry picker machine in an Altona North factory and he became crushed between the cherry picker and a metal beam. When paramedics arrived, they found the man’s colleagues performing CPR on him, which is believed to have helped save his life.

The man suffered a collapsed lung so paramedics inserted a large needle into his chest, which cleared trapped air and blood in his chest cavity and allowed his lung to reinflate.

CPR was continued and paramedics gave the man adrenaline to stimulate his heart.

He was taken to The Alfred hospital.

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12:59 pm, Monday 24 October, 2011

The man aged in his 40s was working on a scissor lift at Broadmeadows Shopping Centre, when the machinary failed.

He is being treated for suspected spinal injuries at Royal Melbourne Hospital and is in a stable condition.

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12:07 am, Friday 14 October, 2011

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland has explained the differences between the model Work Health and Safety Regulation (model WHS Regulation) and the current Queensland WHS Regulation.

These are:

• the project value threshold for appointment of a principal contractor will increase to $250 000 from $80 000
• the principal contractor must ensure that signs are installed for a construction project that identify the principal contractor and contact details (business and after hours)
• there will be no requirement for a principal contractor to undertake site specific induction training prior to commencing work on a construction project.

Excavation work

The duty holder with management or control of a workplace where excavation work is to be carried out must:

• obtain current underground essential services information relating to the workplace and areas adjacent to the workplace before commencing the work
• pay attention to this information when directing or allowing the excavation work
• provide this information to other duty holders involved in the work.

A duty holder must manage risks to health and safety associated with excavation work, and comply with specified controls for trenches at least 1.5m deep.

The model WHS Regulation will be supported by a model code of practice for Excavation Work which is consistent with current Queensland regulations (the Workplace Health and Safety Regulation 2008, sections 306 to 314).

Duties of a principal contractor

The principal contractor must:

• prepare a written WHS management plan for the workplace before work commences
• inform all people who are to carry out construction work in connection with the project of the WHS management plan before they commence
• install a sign identifying who is the principal contractor and including their contact details
• put arrangements in place for ensuring compliance with specified requirements such as facilities and amenities
• manage risks associated with construction materials and waste, plant, traffic and essential services.

The model Code of Practice for Managing Risks in Construction Work will provide guidance on WHS management plans and principal contractor duties. The combination of model WHS Regulation and codes of practice are equivalent to current Queensland Regulation.

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09:58 pm, Tuesday 23 August, 2011

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland has issued guidelines regarding the safe use and appropriate marking of stillages and material boxes.

Such devices are used to store and lift scaffolding components on construction sites and other workplaces.

Material boxes have a completely solid base and four solid and sealed sides, with lifting lugs on the top of the box. They are generally used in the movement of goods and materials around sites and are lifted by cranes.

Stillages may be constructed like material boxes but are not fitted with lifting lugs. They may also have four vertical tubes – one in each corner – and an interconnecting framework that provides some containment. Stillages are primarily intended for storing scaffold tubes and components at scaffolding yards or storage facilities and can in most cases be stacked on top of one another.

Material boxes

Material boxes should be certified to Australian Standard 4991 – Lifting Devices or, for those boxes manufactured before the release of this standard, another relevant standard in effect at the time of manufacture.

The boxes must receive an annual safety inspection and be marked with the date of the inspection. This is the same inspection process that is required for other forms of lifting gear (i.e. chain lifting slings).

Material boxes with lifting lugs should be marked with the maximum rated load that can be lifted and expressed as the working load limit (WLL), safe working load (SWL) or rated capacity. Material boxes should also be marked with the tare mass and an identification number so that the box can be cross referenced to engineering certification.

Stillages

Stillages require engineering certification that the stillage is suitable for the purpose it is being used for. Engineering certification is also required to state how high stillages can be stacked and any other strength or stability issues that are relevant. Unless stillages are stacked on a construction site, it is not necessary to store the engineering certification on the site.

Scaffolding companies are required to maintain and implement a documented process for inspecting stillages when they are returned to the scaffold yard or storage facility. The process ensures that defective stillages are prevented from being used or sent to construction sites until any defects are resolved. The inspection process must include clear pass or fail criteria on bends, weld damage, corrosion, dents and other relevant factors.

Provided the stillages are lifted using a firmly secured sling around the bottom of the stillage that is supporting the entire lift load, it is not necessary for stillages to be marked with a WLL or equivalent. The lifting slings are to be slung in such a way that the stillage cannot fall out of the slings.

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11:24 pm, Thursday 21 July, 2011

A site supervisor on a Perth tilt-up construction site has been fined $6000 over an incident in 2008 whereby four concrete panels fell into a lift shaft.

The tilt-up method of construction involves the erection of large pre-cast concrete panels which are supported by temporary braces until they are safely incorporated into the structure and the rest of the structure is capable of supporting the loads applied to the panels.

The supervisor had instructed the labourers to remove the temporary props without ensuring an inspection had taken place to ensure that all structural elements affecting stability were securely fixed to the panels.

The Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996 deems this inspection mandatory.

The labourers removed six braces and four panels collapsed.  No one was injured.

The supervisor was found guilty of failing to take reasonable care to avoid adversely affecting the safety of other persons through an act or omission.

He was fined in the Perth Magistrates Court last month.

Acting WorkSafe WA Commissioner Lex McCulloch said the case should serve as a reminder not to take tilt-up construction lightly and to ensure all safety measures were in place.

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02:25 pm, Thursday 21 July, 2011

Last Thursday, the NSW Industrial Court fined a building company and its director a total of $137,500 following a fatal accident in Grafton in 2008.

The deceased, aged 34 at the time of his death, was in his first month of work at the shopping centre construction site when he was struck by a steel concrete mould weighing more than 100kg.

He suffered fractures to his skull, face, spine and ribs, swelling on his brain, significant damage to his spinal cord as well as internal lacerations to his left lung.  He died in hospital a few days later.

Justice Marks said the company failed to provide a safe work method statement to its subcontractors for the task of stripping steel column formwork shutters around concrete columns. He said that an acro-prop should have been used to secure the shutters to prevent them from becoming unstable.

The court said there was no exclusion zone in place surrounding the plant and machinery used to lift and move the shutter.

The Judge noted the deceased and his superior had removed several moulds/shutters that morning and the area around the column they were about to strip was uneven and sloping, with loose dirt around the base of the concrete column.

The man removed the bolts connecting the two halves of the steel moulds and connected one half of the mould to a crane-like plant with a chain.

“The remaining half of the shutter was freestanding and was not supported or propped in its position by an acro-prop or other device such as that. The remaining shutter was only held in place by adhesion between the shutter and the concrete column,” Justice Marks said.

“[He] then proceeded to turn and walk away from the remaining shutter with his back to it. However, as [his superior] was in the process of retracting the raised half of the shutter, the remaining half of the column formwork shutter suddenly fell, striking [him] on the head, neck and shoulder.”

WorkCover NSW’s Work Health and Safety Division general manager John Watson said given there was no adequate safety procedures in place, the potential for serious injury was foreseeable and preventable.

“Working in the construction industry can be dangerous,” Mr Watson said. “This is why every precaution must be taken to protect all workers.”

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09:46 pm, Wednesday 1 June, 2011

Two Melbourne caravan builders have been fined for failing to address health and safety issues.

One of the companies faced the Broadmeadows Magistrates’ Court on 10 May charged with 10 counts of failing to comply with an improvement notice.

WorkSafe issued 10 notices after an inspection of the company’s Campbellfield factory in October 2009.

The company had two months to comply with the notices, which covered issues such as slips, trips and falls, an unsafe forklift and mobile work platform and dangerous storage racking.

The company was fined $8,000 for failing to comply.

The second company was fined $5,500 after pleading guilty last month to six counts of failing to comply with an improvement notice issued during an inspection of its factory in September, 2009.

WorkSafe’s Manufacturing, Logistics and Agriculture Division, Ross Pilkington said the fines should remind all workplaces of their obligation to comply with improvement notices or risk legal consequences.

“Despite the improvement notices being a legal direction, they are issued to help protect workers from being injured and significant commercial consequences,” he said.

“It is important for workplaces to address these notices. Even better, we’d rather have workplace address and health and safety concerns well before we arrive.”

“If improvement notices are dealt with promptly, the matter generally ends there. If you don’t, along with the risk of someone being hurt, the chance of a prosecution rises quickly.”

“It would be far more beneficial for everyone, and less expensive, if workplaces took the time to fix safety issues as soon as they’re identified.”

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06:43 pm, Sunday 29 May, 2011

WorkSafe is investigating the death of a rig worker who fell from a 20-metre-tall drilling rig after it collapsed at a Melbourne construction site yesterday afternoon.

The 30-year-old, who had been wearing a harness, was setting up a drilling machine on the mast of the drilling rig when the mast collapsed, bringing him down with it, WorkSafe spokesman Michael Birt said.

Paramedics attended to the man but he died at the scene of the construction site in South Melbourne.

It is the ninth work-related death in Victoria this year.

In Western Australia, next month WorkSafe will be conducting safety inspections of construction sites throughout regional parts of the state as part of a drive to improve workplace safety.

WorkSafe says there will be a particular emphasis on ensuring health and safety management plans are put in place before high risk work is undertaken.

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07:33 am, Saturday 21 May, 2011

More than 1,000 workers at a construction site of an alumina refinery near Gladstone in central Queensland are refusing to work unless safety is improved.

A construction worker was seriously injured at the site when a hatchway cover fell on his legs on Tuesday.

One of the man’s legs had to be partially amputated and he is recovering in hospital.

The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) says the injured worker is in a stable condition.

ETU spokesman Craig Giddins says the workers sat on site yesterday while workplace checks were carried out.

“We’re hopeful that we’ll have a resolution to start addressing the safety issues on site and from there once that’s addressed, the production will start again,” he said.

“We’re seeking that the entire site is deemed safe by way of walkthroughs and making sure that the safety concerns that have been raised over the last couple of days have been addressed.

“We’re still negotiating with the company as far as getting the process right to get the workers back to work.

“At this point in time negotiations have been long and exhausting but we’re hopeful to get a resolution to the issues as soon as possible.

The managing director of the building contractor company Andy Grieg says it is a tragic incident which had not happened before.

The company has set up exclusion zones while an inspection of welding work is undertaken.

It says it has also introduced new safety measures, including retraining staff and more safety advisers.

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland is also investigating.

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