by Cam Lucadou-Wells
A company has been convicted and fined $160,000 after a 60-tonne crane toppled near two workers on a Dandenong South construction site in 2019.
Misz Pty Ltd, trading as Steel and Precast Erectors, was sentenced in the Victorian County Court on 18 September after pleading guilty to a charge of failing to ensure a safe workplace.
The company had been hired to lift and install pre-fabricated steel structures to form a roof on a factory’s building extension.
On a windy 3 June 2019, the crane tilted over to the right.
Its boom struck the building roof, and its load of steel components crashed onto the building and close to two workers on a nearby platform.
The crane operator – a Misz director – had to crawl out of the crane’s cabin. He told WorkSafe that a gust of wind had pushed the crane “out of radius”, sentencing judge Andrew Palmer said.
“That no-one was injured or killed, when they might easily have been, is a matter of pure luck.”
A WorkSafe inspector found a bulldog clip was used to disable a warning system in the cabin.
If operational, it could have alerted the operator and led to the load’s weight being reduced, the crane moved closer to the building, using a larger crane or waiting for weather conditions to change, WorkSafe argued.
Judge Palmer said Misz’s guilty plea acknowledged there was a risk that by disabling the warning system that the crane was operated outside its safety parameters.
There was no evidence that the disabling happened on a regular basis, nor that Misz took a “cavalier or corner-cutting approach” to the lift.
He noted that Misz didn’t offer an explanation for why the warning system was disabled on that day.
“The obvious inference is that the warning system was disabled in order to allow the crane to be operated near to, at, or beyond its safety parameters, without the warning being triggered.
“That inevitably makes it a serious breach.”
However, it was not as serious as bypassing an interlock or override device that prevents a machine being used in an unsafe manner, Judge Palmer stated.
Misz, which is no longer trading, had no prior convictions or subsequent offending.
Its “traumatized” director later sold the crane. The company had “limited capacity” to pay a fine.
WorkSafe health and safety executive director Sam Jenkin said the consequences could have been “absolutely catastrophic”.
“Built-in safety mechanisms serve a very real purpose and it is simply unacceptable for any duty holder to treat them as an optional extra that can be switched off for the sake of short-term convenience.”
