Height hazard blitz

Last week's safety blitz on height hazards in the ACT has resulted in 12 prohibition notices, 17 improvement notices and one compliance agreement.

ACT WorkCover inspectors visited around 40 commercial construction sites. The focus was on common fall hazards associated with multi-storey building sites, including penetrations in working decks, inadequate edge protection, incomplete scaffolding and lack of kickboards.

Steven Hart, acting commissioner at WorkCover, told Safety Solutions that the main reason for staging the blitz was to affect change and raise awareness of safety and hazards in the construction industry, where equipment and people can fall.

"The campaign found a number of non-compliant issues on some sites but there have been improvements," said Hart. "Some of the issues which still have not been addressed are incomplete scaffolds, inadequately guarded areas, rails and brick guarding."

The decision to stage the campaign was made after two recent height safety incidents saw a worker injury and a fatality due to inadequate height safety. In the first instance a worker was struck on the back of the head by a falling object and fell from a poorly protected edge. The second involved the recent death of a worker who fell through an uncapped penetration.

The blitz targeted medium to large commercial construction sites. These sites were chosen at random but were given advanced warning of the campaign.

Carmen Li, journalist