Two construction companies have had severe fines slapped on them after a Batemans Bay worker had a narrow escape from death earlier this week.
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Work on the Surf Beach site of the shire’s new water treatment plant ground to a halt on Monday when a construction worker was hit in the neck by a crane.
The man, aged in his mid-50s, was standing on top of three-level scaffolding when he was knocked down.
He said yesterday: “I’m lucky I’m alive. I’ve got 14-year-old twin daughters and I could have been killed.”
Preferring to remain anonymous, the man said he was concerned that it would take a death for attention to be paid to inefficient equipment being used on site.
“We don’t want to wait for that to happen,” he said.
Public Works Department project manager Mike Healy played down the incident earlier this week.
He said the injured man had received a “glancing blow” to the neck, but didn’t appear to be seriously injured.
Despite this, WorkCover has slapped a series of infringement notices on project contractors Water Infrastructure Group and SG & CA Grey Formwork Pty Ltd.
The contractors had to immediately stop work on the project’s formwork (the skeleton of the building) and the vehicle-loading crane that was involved in the incident.
An order for improvement was also issued on the project’s scaffolding.
According to site union delegate Gary McCarthy, concerns over the incorrect use of a loading-vehicle crane on the site had been circulating for months.
“The crane that he was hit with is a vehicle-loading crane that’s not designed for construction work,” Mr McCarthy said.
Despite this, Mr McCarthy, who was standing next to his colleague when he was injured, said the crane was continually used to lift and place formwork shutters at heights of up to nine metres.
“Because it doesn’t have a winch or a rope with a hook coming up and down when you use this particular crane at height for construction purposes, you put workers at risk of being hit and/or crushed by the boom or by the formwork shutters being lifted,” he said.
“On this site the load was reinforcement steels and shutters - shutters that weigh up to one-and-a-half tonnes.”
Mr McCarthy says the project, which is being built on a $21 million contract for Eurobodalla Shire Council, should set the standard for occupational health and safety.
“This is a State and Federally funded job worth more than $21 million,” he said.
“Normally these sites set the standards but this one has had nine infringement notices since January 21.”
The incident is a reflection on government, according to Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union NSW occupational health and safety co-ordinator Rick Resh.
“This is the second incident on this particular site where a person has been off-work with injury,” he said.
“They’re clearly not carrying out proper audits to ensure the company that they’ve taken on to do the work is applying occupational health and safety principals and risk assessments.
“Using this piece of equipment had the potential to kill.”
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