September 9, 2015
The South Burnett Regional Council has escaped prosecution but has agreed to implement workplace health and safety undertakings worth almost $225,000 following an incident in 2013 where a man was crushed in Kingaroy by a reversing front-end loader.
The commitments include spending $115,500 to install reversing cameras and sensors on high-risk mobile equipment.
The injured man, who worked for commercial waste company Vic’s Bins, was injured on May 20, 2013, at the Kingaroy Waste Transfer Station.
He suffered multiple fractures to his pelvis, vertebrae and left femur; a perforated bowel and bladder, and his left leg was amputated below the knee.
After an inspection by Workplace Health and Safety inspectors, Council was issued a summons alleging it had a contravened a section of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.
It was alleged that Council had failed to:
- Provide a safe system of work for other persons such as pedestrians, including having in place an adequate work system to ensure that hazards such as moving and particularly, reversing powered mobile plant, was identified and risks were controlled;
- Ensure that the plant was operated safely;
- Have in place an adequate system of work to ensure that other persons did not come into contact with plant, namely a loader operating to spread and compact rubbish delivered on site;
- Ensure that there was a separation zone, barrier, working zone or other delineated danger zone between vehicles or other moving plant including loaders spreading and compacting the rubbish, and persons delivering rubbish near or around moving items of plant; and
- Provide adequate supervision and monitoring to prevent persons from being located in an area where there was a risk that people behind or beside a vehicle may be hit or run over.
In response to the summons, Council supplied an undertaking to the Office of Fair and Safe Work Queensland which, after revision, was accepted.
As well as the reversing cameras, the Council also committed to spending:
- $35,000 to upgrade its WHS Management System and hiring an OHS consultant to help upgrade the Council’s Work Health and Safety Management System Plan;
- $19,500 on three audits of its Work Health and Safety Management System Plan over the next two years;
- $24,000 to conduct a work health and safety awareness program for the 400 commercial users of the Nanango, Kingaroy, Wondai and Murgon waste disposal facilities;
- $9000 to sponsor a Recognition Award for the highest-achieving undergraduate student studying the Bachelor of Occupational Health and Safety Science at the University of Queensland in 2015, 2016 and 2017; and
- $12,000 to provide one annual vocational internship to a University of Queensland Bachelor of Occupational Health and Safety Science student every year from 2015, 2016, 2017.
Council also agreed to pay $9624 costs to the Office of Fair and Safe Work Queensland.
“I have concluded that an Enforceable Undertaking is the preferred enforcement option to continuing the prosecution due to the opportunity to provide lasting organisational change within SBRC and the implementation of monitored and targeted health and safety improvements, which could not be achieved by prosecution,” Deputy Director-General Simon Blackwood noted.
- External link: WorkCover report
- Related article: Man Crushed At Tip
