Grocon's safety failures
Date
April 25, 2013
The building sites of construction firm Grocon have been beset with safety incidents, including a five-kilogram piece of concrete plummeting eight levels onto a city street during demolition works, reports from WorkSafe show.
And thousands of building workers are planning to march next Tuesday from Grocon's Swanston Street CUB site, where a wall collapse last month killed three people including a brother and sister, to WorkSafe's offices in Exhibition Street.
In February, after a crane driver fell to his death at Grocon's Emporium project in Lonsdale Street, Fairfax Media requested through freedom of information all WorkSafe reports on safety incidents at the company's sites in recent years.
The reports show that the builder seriously infringed safety requirements at least four times between February 2011 and February this year, and was once ordered to immediately stop work to improve safety conditions.
Included in the material provided by WorkSafe were 14 reports of less serious incidents on Grocon sites that resulted in either minor injuries to workers or warnings from the safety regulator.
Among these incidents:
■ In May 2011 steel fell from a crane at the Lonsdale Street building site previously occupied by department store Myer. The steel smashed windows in the Myer and David Jones stores in Little Bourke Street and damaged a glass canopy over the footpath outside Myer.
■ A 21-tonne excavator in operation at the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre tipped over in April 2012, coming to rest on its counterweight.
■ Also at the new cancer centre, excavation work in October last year caused movement beneath Royal Parade, closing part of the road for several weeks.
■ The partial collapse of flooring during a concrete pour at the Lonsdale Street site.
One WorkSafe report also stated that in late 2011, as the builder began demolition work in Lonsdale Street, a piece of concrete dislodged from the facade of the former Myer building and fell eight storeys onto the street. No one was injured.
The $290 million development of the Lonsdale Street site was the focus last year of a blockade by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union that stopped work on the project and led to Grocon launching a $10.5 million damages claim in the Supreme Court.
The WorkSafe reports on Grocon shed light on the notoriously
dangerous construction industry and range from minor infringements that Grocon staff agreed with WorkSafe to fix to four orders to improve safety and one prohibition notice under which work stopped.
Grocon spokeswoman Jane Wilson said the building industry by its nature presented risks that needed to be managed.
''We believe we have a record as good as any in the industry and one of the lowest time-lost-to-injury rates,'' Ms Wilson said, citing a safety award that the company received from regulator Safe Work Australia last year.
However, an experienced construction worker said that safety standards across the industry were slipping and that major builders such as Grocon needed to improve. ''Other companies aren't doing much better,'' he said.
In the past five years, more than 17,000 injury claims across the construction industry were reported to WorkSafe. These claims cost almost $1 billion in treatment, wages and other expenses.
The Victorian head of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union said the three deaths at the CUB site last month were proof that Grocon did not take safety seriously enough.
''It was their site, they were in charge of it, and the wall has come over and killed three people,'' said the union's state secretary, John Setka.
Mr Setka defended the march from the CUB site next Tuesday morning, saying it was not inflammatory.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/grocons-safety-failures-20130424-2if8f.html#ixzz2RPnr3T63
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