New Zealand construction company fined for fatal beam accident

The following article is an abridgement of an article originally published on the WorkSafe NZ website.

WorkSafe investigation reveals safety failures

A 21-year-old worker was killed by a falling steel beam at a construction site in October 2021. The beam weighed 500 kilograms and was not secured properly. The worker was standing on a stack of wooden pallets to cut the beam with an angle grinder when it fell on him.

WorkSafe New Zealand investigated the incident and found that the workers had improvised a way to remove the beams when their original method was no longer feasible. They did not have access to safety-critical information about the beam’s stability. WorkSafe’s area investigation manager, Danielle Henry, said that the employer should have conducted a risk assessment and involved experts to develop a safer approach.

“When there is no obvious safe way to work it's best to stop, reassess, and involve experts to develop a new approach – rather than attempting to adapt things on the fly."

Employer sentenced and fined

The employer pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and was sentenced at Auckland District Court on 12th December 2023. The company was fined $180,000 and ordered to pay reparations of $110,000 to the victim’s family. Henry said that the incident was preventable and that they failed to ensure the health and safety of its workers.

Previous crane incident at the same site

WorkSafe also prosecuted another company for a crane toppling at the same construction site a year before this death. Henry said that the crane incident should have served as a warning for the site’s safety standards, but it was not taken seriously. She said that WorkSafe was committed to holding businesses accountable for worker health and safety in the construction sector, which is known to be risky and dynamic.

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Sources

Falling beam crushed worker by WorkSafe New Zealand, 12th December, 2023.

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