WorkSafe Victoria | A water tank construction and repair company has been convicted and fined $50,000 after an engineering student was injured at a residential site in Keysborough.
JS Armstrong Water Tanks Pty Ltd was sentenced in the Dandenong Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to a single charge of failing to ensure a workplace under its management and control was safe and without risks to health.
The company was also ordered to pay $4,452 in costs.
The court heard JS Armstrong workers were carrying out work within a large excavation on the property in preparation for the installation of an 89,000-litre water tank.
In March 2024, a 20-year-old engineering student assisting with shovelling work at the site was leaning over the edge to pass a bottle of water into the excavation when the ground beneath her gave way.
She fell three metres into the excavation and landed on a brick, suffering a vertebral fracture, spine tenderness, and whiplash.
A WorkSafe investigation found the excavation site had no warning signs, fencing, or battering, and that soil was seen peeling away from the walls of the excavation while workers were inside.
JS Armstrong admitted it was reasonably practicable to have reduced the risk by ensuring the sides of the excavation were battered, there was a safe entry point to the excavation, and barricades or warning barriers were placed at least one metre from the edge of the excavation before any work was performed.
