Government of Western Australia | A spray painting and sandblasting company has been dealt the biggest ever fine under Western Australia’s workplace safety and health laws over the death of a 16-year-old worker in 2023.

RPC Surface Treatment Pty Ltd pleaded guilty to two charges of failing to ensure the health and safety of a worker and was issued a global fine in the Perth Magistrates Court.

In June 2023, a labourer who assisted with spray painting and sandblasting was killed when a steel beam weighing approximately 425kg suspended from an overhead monorail system fell on his chest.

The steel beam was attached to the monorail at each end by S-hooks (fabricated steel hooks in an s-shape) connected to chain slings. The beam had been primed and coated and was left suspended to dry in the main spray booth.

Early on the morning of 15 June 2023, the labourer and three other workers were instructed to move the beams to another area where they were to be collected later in the day.

When the labourer was pushing the beam by hand, the S-hooks deformed and straightened out under the load and the beam fell onto him, causing fatal injuries.

The workers at RPC routinely selected lifting devices by a process of trial and error, and they were not required to determine the weight of the load prior to suspending it.

The weight was estimated via a visual inspection and whether it had been unloaded by hand or with a forklift, and the S-hooks did not have a known working load limit or rated capacity.

In March 2021, WorkSafe inspectors had issued a Prohibition Notice to RPC prohibiting the activity of working underneath suspended loads.

While this notice did not relate to the monorail or S-hooks directly, it did direct RPC to the same risk, namely being crushed by falling objects while working under suspended loads.

SafeWork SA | South Australia’s Department for Education has been fined $225,000 after a student was seriously injured in a fall from a broken swing in a school playground.

The Department for Education pleaded guilty and was sentenced in the South Australian Employment Court after a SafeWork SA prosecution.

The incident occurred on 25 August 2021, when a 16-year-old student was using a playground swing at Port Augusta Special School.

One of the swing’s severely worn supporting bolts broke, throwing the student to the ground, resulting in significant head injuries.

The SafeWork SA investigation found that the swing failed because one of the two shackle bolts that supported the swing’s chains had worn down over years of use so that only 5% of its cross-section remained.

Testing confirmed there was no manufacturing defect in the worn shackle.

The court found that damage to the shackle likely occurred gradually over multiple annual inspection periods after a brass bush failed. The failed bush and worn bolt were readily identifiable on inspection.

The school’s playground equipment was installed in 2012. None of the playground equipment was ever given a comprehensive annual inspection in the eight years prior to the offence. Nor did any of the quarterly inspections include the load bearing moving parts of the swings.

The applicable Australian Standard allows a maximum three-month period between inspections of the shackles and bearings. The Australian Standard was never correctly applied or followed by the Department for Education in the eight years prior to the offence.

The school’s playground equipment was immediately fenced off after the incident and later decommissioned. A new playground was installed at a cost of about $290,000.

Prior to the incident, the Department for Infrastructure and Transport had written to the Department for Education, outlining the Australian Standard’s recommended minimum quarterly inspection of moving parts of playground equipment.

The Department for Education was charged with one count of breaching its primary safety duty contrary to section 32 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA).

A conviction was recorded, and the Department for Education was fined $225,000 following a reduction by 10% for its guilty plea.

The Department for Education was also ordered to pay a contribution to SafeWork SA’s legal costs of $2,310, and a Victim of Crime Levy of $437.

Government of Western Australia | A transport and logistics company has been fined $625,000 (and ordered to pay more than $8,000 in costs) over the serious injury of a worker in 2021.

Toll Transport Pty Ltd pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain a safe workplace and, by that failure, causing serious harm to the worker, and was fined in Perth Magistrates Court.

In January 2021, the injured worker was employed as a forklift driver at Toll Transport’s premises at Perth Airport. Having returned from work after a shoulder injury, he was on light duties.

The area in which he was working included loading docks and freight bays where freight was delivered and sorted before being loaded onto road trains and transported to mine sites.

Some freight bays were marked with a sticker on the concrete floor that corresponded with an identical sticker placed on the freight.

On the morning of the incident, the injured worker was tasked with changing the stickers on the floor of the freight bays.

He was bending over changing a sticker when he was struck from behind by a reversing forklift, one of the three forklifts operating in the area that morning.

He suffered serious injuries to both legs, including fractures and crush injuries and the degloving of part of one leg, and has required five surgeries since the incident.

Government of Western Australia | A Jindalee building surveyor has been fined $5,000 for failing to ensure the proper management and supervision of building surveying work at sites in Balga and Wanneroo.

The Building Services Board found Chad Robert Harvey, trading as Core Building Surveyors, had shown a “concerning lack of understanding” of the duties and responsibilities of a registered building surveyor.

The Board imposed the fine at its meeting after considering the findings of a Building and Energy investigation.

At the Balga site, where a new two-storey group dwelling was planned, Mr. Harvey issued a certificate of design compliance (CDC), which is a declaration that a building will comply with applicable building standards if it is constructed in accordance with the plans and specifications.

The Board found Mr. Harvey’s CDC had failed to show compliance of the Balga building in areas such as storm water drainage, stair and balustrade construction, floor levels, construction of the steel frame, wall cladding, and fire safety.

These omissions created potential hazards related to fire, falls, health, and amenity due to structural, waterproofing, and drainage issues.

At the Wanneroo site, the Board found Mr. Harvey failed to provide supporting documentation or evidence of suitability for a change of use of a commercial unit.

He also should have issued a CDC but instead provided a certificate of building compliance (CBC) that did not show how the building complied with the applicable building standards in many areas.

The Board found Mr. Harvey had fallen short of the standards expected under WA’s Code of Conduct for Building Surveyors, which Building and Energy published in 2022 to guide registered building surveyors about their legal and public interest obligations.

Government of Western Australia | G8 Education Limited has been penalised for inadequate supervision and failure to protect a child from a hazard likely to cause injury.

The approved provider, which operates the service Great Beginnings Cloverdale, was ordered to pay a total penalty of $65,000 for contravening sections 165(1) and 167(1) of the Education and Care Services National Law (WA) Act 2012 for the offences of inadequate supervision of a child and failing to ensure that every reasonable precaution was taken to protect children from harm and from any hazard likely to cause injury.

A Department of Communities (Communities) investigation found that two children, aged one year seven months and two years four months old, exited the toddler room as an educator held the door open to speak to a parent. One child proceeded to wander into the car park, while the other remained in the area.

Fortunately, a parent noticed the child was alone in the car park and returned the child to the toddlers’ room. It was at this point that the educators realised that the two children had exited the service.

G8 Education Limited was also ordered to pay $2,000 towards the Department of Communities’ legal costs.

Government of Western Australia | An underground mining contractor has been fined $540,000, and ordered to pay $8,414 in costs, after an October 2022 rock fall in a ventilation shaft at the Hamlet Underground Gold Mine near Kambalda, which killed a driller and injured a probationary offsider.

RUC Mining Contractors Pty Ltd pleaded guilty in the Kalgoorlie Magistrates Court to two counts of the same offence, exposing a worker to a risk of death, injury, or harm to health, contrary to sections 19(1) and 32(1) of the Work Health and Safety Act 2020.

This offence does not indicate that the breach caused the fatal incident. However, it highlights a failure in relation to risk management.

Magistrate William Yoo imposed on RUC Mining Contractors, which Gold Fields Australia Pty Ltd engaged to conduct raise bore-drilling work at the Hamlet Underground Gold Mine, part of its St Ives Gold Mine, a single fine of $540,000 for the two counts.

In October 2022, an RUC Mining Contractors-employed driller and probationary offsider were engaged in disassembling a reamer by unbolting and removing wings attached to the reamer’s centre box at the base of a ventilation shaft, which had been drilled using an underground mining technique known as raise boring.

Reamers must be disassembled and removed from the holes they create. At the time of the fatal incident, the disassembly method that RUC Mining Contractors employed involved pulling the reamer’s head to the side of the raise, rotating the reamer’s head to position its worked-on parts beneath supported ground and behind protective curtains.

As the reamer was not centred in the hole, RUC Mining Contractors staff were experiencing difficulties hanging the curtains, made from rubber conveyor belt material, and draping them over the reamer’s head. To enable the centring of the reamer in the hole, an RUC Mining Contractors employee booked a jumbo operator to install a torque plate on the ventilation shaft’s right-hand wall. However, in the meantime, disassembly work continued.

During that period, the RUC Mining Contractors area manager visited the mine and observed that the protective curtains were not properly installed. Also, the area manager instructed the driller to climb off the reamer as the driller was working too close to the curtains directly beneath the hole and, consequently, beneath unsupported ground.

The fatal incident occurred about an hour after the RUC Mining Contractors area manager left the ventilation shaft. The driller was standing on top of the reamer’s head, undoing bolts on its top. The probationary offsider was standing on the ground close to the reamer’s edge, feeding the driller the air hose for the rattle gun they were using. The driller was standing under unsupported ground. A rock fall happened, striking the driller and causing the probationary offsider to fall to the ground. The driller died instantly. The probationary offsider suffered minor physical injuries and a psychological injury.

Government of Western Australia | A meat processing co-operative has been fined $785,000 (and ordered to pay more than $5,700 in costs) over the death of a worker at a Katanning abattoir in 2022.

Western Australian Meat Marketing Co-operative Ltd (WAMMCO) pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain a safe work environment and, by that failure, causing the death of a worker and was fined in the Albany Magistrates Court.

In December 2022, an abattoir worker was killed after becoming entangled in an item of plant known as a “cake press” while working at the Katanning Abattoir operated as part of the WAMMCO co-operative.

The Katanning Abattoir processes lamb for human consumption and by-products for animal feed and biofuel. The incident occurred in the “rendering shed,” an area where products not intended for human consumption were processed.

The worker was carrying out a daily shutdown procedure for which a work instruction was to be followed.

The process involved the worker emptying hessian bags of meat meal weighing 25kg-to-30kg into an open hopper to clean out the cake press which contained paddles that needed to be rotating during the procedure.

While in the process of emptying a bag into the hopper, the worker was drawn into the large opening of the cake press, suffering fatal crush injuries.

SafeWork NSW | Menai Civil Contractors Pty Ltd has been fined $69,750 in the Industrial Court of NSW after pleading guilty to a category 3 offence under the Work Health and Safety Act NSW 2011.

SafeWork NSW prosecuted the civil construction company following a workplace incident on 11 November 2022 where a worker fell nearly four metres from a bridge abutment.

Menai Civil was engaged as the principal contractor at a construction site at Huntley, New South Wales where the worker was employed to undertake formwork stripping.

At the time of the incident, the worker was positioned at the top of the southern abutment, using an extension ladder to attach wire chains between a 26-tonne excavator and form soldiers.

The worker was not wearing a harness when carrying out this work, as the steel to anchor it was on the opposite side of the abutment.

The court found that the risk of a worker falling from height while stripping formwork was known to Menai Civil and it had a duty to ensure its subcontractors were following safe systems of work. Its failure to do so was inconsistent with a proactive or systematic approach to safety.

Menai Civil was convicted of failing to meet its duty to ensure the health and safety of its workers.

Falls from heights remain a leading cause of traumatic injuries and fatalities at NSW workplaces, with most occurring in the construction industry.

Business News | G and G Mining Fabrication will pay more than $500,000 over a workplace incident at its workshop that caused a worker to lose his eye and suffer serious head injuries.

The Hazelmere-based company pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain a safe work environment that caused serious harm to a worker over an incident in August 2021.

Midland Magistrates Court fined G and G Mining $500,000 and ordered the company to pay more than $6,500 in costs.

In a written statement, WorkSafe said the incident involved a steel plate weighing more than 500 kilogrammes, known as a “lug plate,” falling on the boilermaker’s head while he was fabricating a hook-up assembly for an excavator bucket.

As a result, the boilermaker incurred several significant injuries, including the loss of an eye and multiple skull-based fractures.

According to WorkSafe, the injured boilermaker considered the lug plate secured by turnbuckles which were welded on to provide additional restraint.

WorkSafe said G and G Mining Fabrication did have a relevant safe work procedure both documented and in place, however it was not utilised or provided to workers.

WorkSafe Victoria | A metal fabrication company has been fined $30,000 after a 17-year-old apprentice suffered horrific burns when his clothes caught fire while welding.

CND Contractors Pty Ltd was sentenced in the Shepparton Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to one charge of failing to provide and maintain a safe system of work, and one charge of failing to provide workers with necessary supervision.

The company was fined without conviction and ordered to pay costs of $4,365.

In October 2023, the first-year apprentice was fabricating a metal footing cage when sparks from the welding process ignited his clothing.

After realising he was on fire, the apprentice ran outside and attempted to extinguish the flames by rolling on the ground but was unsuccessful. Still alight, he ran back inside and shouted for help before co-workers used a hose to put out the flames.

The teenager was airlifted to Melbourne and spent a month in hospital, undergoing multiple surgeries including skin grafts to his stomach, chest, upper arms, neck, back, buttocks, and hips. He continues to suffer both emotionally and physically from widespread scarring, including mobility issues and tightness in his chest.

At the time of the incident, the apprentice was wearing a welding helmet, a long sleeve shirt and a branded hoodie supplied by CND. He had supplied the rest of his clothing himself, including leather gauntlets which protected his hands and forearms from the fire.

A WorkSafe investigation found that the hoodie, which was a blend of cotton and polyester, did not offer sufficient protection for welding. It was further revealed that CND did not implement and enforce a clothing policy or requirements for sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE), and did not offer the apprentice a leather apron, leather clothing or a full boiler suit.

CND admitted it was reasonably practicable to have implemented a system of work that enforced appropriate PPE, and to have provided supervision to manage the risks associated with welding and ensure workers used the PPE supplied.

The court heard that a month before the incident, the same apprentice’s hoodie had been burned during another welding task, damaging the front pocket.

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