Australia, Sept. 19 -- County Court of Australia issued text of the following judgement on Sept. 18:

1. On 3 June 2019, a crane tipped over at a construction site in Dandenong South. The company responsible for the crane's operation, Misz Pty Ltd ('Misz'), has pleaded guilty to a single charge under s 26(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 ('the OHS Act'), of failing to ensure, as a person who has to any extent the management or control of a workplace, that the workplace was, so far as was reasonably practicable, safe and without risks to health. The maximum penalty for this offence is $1,450,710.

Circumstances of the offending[1]

2. In June 2019, Misz was engaged to undertake structural lifting works on an extension to a building on the Frankston-Dandenong Road in Dandenong South. This involved lifting and installing pre-fabricated steel structures which formed the roof of the extension.

3. On the morning of 3 June 2019, one of the directors of Misz, Zeljko Krajacic, drove Misz's 60 tonne crane onto the site and around to a driveway at the rear of the building. The crane was set up on the concrete driveway (rather than on the adjoining soft and unstable ground). The prevailing weather conditions were windy. Wind can affect the safe operating parameters of a crane.

4. The builders had engaged a rigging company, Transilworks Pty Ltd ('Transilworks'), to install the steel components of the extension. The owner of Transilworks, Gavrila Faur, discussed the set up and lift with Mr Krajacic. Two Transilworks riggers, John Ardellen and Alex Marc, assisted the installation.

5. Mr Faur and the two riggers completed the assembly of the steel roof structure on the concrete driveway near the crane. The structure was then hooked up to the crane. The site supervisor, Karl Hoffner, asked Mr Krajacic to lift the structure and advise how heavy it was. Mr Krajacic did so, and informed Mr Hoffner that it was too heavy for him to lift onto the roof.

6. After discussions, the structure was partially dismantled so as to reduce its weight and allow Mr Krajacic to lift it. As Mr Krajacic commenced the lift, the two Transilworks riggers were on a nearby elevated work platform ('EWP').

7. When the structure was nearly in place, the crane tilted to its right hand side, the boom of the crane made contact with the roof of the building, and the load crashed down onto the building, close to the EWP. Mr Krajacic had to crawl out of the crane's cabin. That no-one was injured or killed, when they might easily have been, is a matter of pure luck.[2]

8. Mr Krajacic later told the WorkSafe informant that a gust of wind had pushed the crane out of radius, and that it had slewed to the right.

9. During the recovery process, another WorkSafe inspector observed that an instrument in the cabin displayed a lift weight that would have been outside the crane's safety parameters. The prosecution submits that this suggests that the crane may have been being operated outside its safety parameters, as further evidenced by the very fact that it tipped over. However, the prosecution accepts that it cannot prove this.

10. The inspector also observed that a bulldog clip had been used to disable a warning system in the cabin. There was a lack of evidence about precisely how this warning system operated, including whether it manifested in a visible or audible alarm. What is clear, however, is that the warning system did not prevent an operator from operating the crane outside its safety parameters, but was designed to warn them of the fact that they were doing so. The bulldog clip disabled the warning system such that it would not warn the operator if a lift exceeded the crane's safety parameters.

11. I do not need to determine whether an operational warning system would have prevented the crane from tipping over on the day of the incident; and I would not, in any event, be able to do so, given the lack of evidence on matters such as:

a. Whether the crane was being operated outside its safety parameters at the time of the incident;

b. Whether the wind gust at the time of the incident was unforeseeable and whether it transformed what would otherwise have been a safe lift into an unsafe one;

c. Whether the warning system would have been triggered prior to the incident if it had not been disabled; and

d. Whether the operator would have been able to avoid the crane tipping over if the warning system had triggered.

*Rest of the document and Footnotes can be viewed at: (http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/vic/VCC/2024/1449.html)

Disclaimer: Curated by HT Syndication.