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WorkSafe Victoria is a division of the Victorian WorkCover Authority

Construction Safety Update

Absolute Shocker of the Week

The Complete Collection 2001 - 2002

Absolute Shocker of the Week, 18 January 2002


Absolute Shocker of the Week, 25 January 2002


This week's Absolute Shocker shows the consequences of an incident that occurred on6 December 2001 at the pulverised coal injection plant, in Port Kembla, NSW.

The crane is a 160 tonne Lieberr truck-mounted hydraulic boom, rigged with a fly-jib.

We'd love to answer your questions on the specific details of how such a thing couldhappen, but the incident is still under investigation by WorkCover NSW.

Suffice to say that you don't have to be a certificated crane operator, dogman or riggerto know that not having all your outriggers extended while you have the crane at full-stick on the boom is simply dicing with disaster.

Then again, if you were a certificated crane operator, dogman or rigger, what planetwould you have to be on to allow this sort of thing to happen?

We suspect that this is not the last we'll here of this little mishap.

P.S. We received these photos at the end of a long chain of e-mails that appears tohave circumnavigated the world a couple of times. To borrow the slogan recentlyadopted by WorkCover NSW, you never know who is "Watching Out for You"!

Absolute Shocker of the Week, No. 3, 01 February 2002


This week's Absolute Shocker was discovered by a WorkSafe inspector in the VictorianWestern District town of Warrnambool.

A local business had contracted the thrill-seeker shown here to remove the 20-metre mast.His work method was to monkey up the thing without even a token safety harness, dismantleit by hand, and lower each section with a handline!

Needless to say, there was no evidence of a Job Safety Analysis.

Prohibition Notices on the contractor and on the business that engaged him put a stop to that.As the current WorkSafe Victoria campaign slogan says, "No-one should die at work" -- noteven idiots.



The WorkSafe inspector saw red when he caught these cowboy riggers red-handed in theSunraysia town of Red Cliffs, Victoria. What a total disgrace these turkeys are to their trade!

This idiot has committed the inexcusable sin of jumping out of his cherry-picker instead ofusing it for doing the job. All-in-all, an Absolute Shocker!

Absolute Shocker of the Week, No. 5, 15 February 2002 Page 1 of 1


Here are a couple of blokes who must have missed all the recent WorkSafe VictoriaTV and radio advertisements -- "No-one should die at work". Either that or theysimply do not agree.

This snap was taken in the Melbourne western suburb of Footscray by one of oursubscribers who forwarded it in to us.

The attached e-mail said:

"Our crew saw this as they were driving back from a job. This photo wasactually taken half an hour later after the crew came back grabbed the digitalcamera and went back to take the photo.

"The first time they drove past there was actually one of the guys standing ontop of the pallets. Thought this was a good one for your 'Absolute Shocker ofthe Week'.

"There was actually public walking under this as well."

We agree with our subscriber and have made it this week's Absolute Shocker. We arecertain you will agree that it is a very worthy winner.

PS: Before you ask; yes, WorkSafe is investigating.



Here's a perfect example of what can go wrong if you don't follow the most basic rules of saferigging practice. This partially completed structure blew down on the evening not long agoon a site in the Melbourne eastern suburb of East Bentleigh.

Fortunately, no-one was injured, but it certainly trashed a couple of cherry-pickers and no-doubt blew the builder's schedule and profit to smithereens.

Every certificated rigger knows that you never leave these sorts of structures overnightwithout temporary bracing or guying to stop exactly this sort of collapse.

So what went wrong here? Apparently, there was no certificated rigger in charge!

Why did the principal contractor allow the job to start without a certificated rigger? And whydid the crane operator and the dogman agree to do the job without one? That's what theWorkSafe Victoria investigation is now trying to establish.

In the meantime, it gets a guernsey as this week's Absolute Shocker.

Absolute Shocker of the Week, No. 7, 1 March 2002


Here's what the principal contractor's Safety Supervisor saw during a regular site inspection --a portable generator on a large roof. Seems perfectly normal at first glance. In fact, it evenhas a testing tag indicating that, in the not-too-distant past, it was found to be in a safe andserviceable condition. But he decided to take a closer look.

And this is the classic example of deliberate interference with a safety feature that hediscovered. He also learnt that there is yet another way of using the ubiquitous tek-screw.

Yes, dear readers, there are idiots in our midst who wilfully overturn the best endeavoursmade to keep them alive.

This is not a case of "well, they should have been given more training". After all, how muchtraining does it take to realise that a thing clearly labelled as a "Safety Switch" will have somedifficulty in saving your life when its battling against a tek-screw! These are the sort ofcowboys who have no place on construction sites.

So, as you can see, this week's Absolute Shocker is also literally a shocker.

We suppose it’s a cheaper form of execution than the electric chair, but we'd prefer it if thedeath penalty was abolished on all construction sites.

Absolute Shocker of the Week, 8 March 2002


These gooses were doing an electrical job in the Northern New South Wales town of CoffsHarbour.

The story goes that when the bloke at the top of the ladder was challenged, his reply was, "I'ma licensed electrician, so what's your problem, mate?"



The workers' compensation statistics show that sprains and strains are the single mostcommon form of injury to construction workers. And one of the most commoncauses of these sorts of injuries is slips, trips and falls.

The construction site shown in this photo might be an extreme example of non-existent housekeeping, but the sad truth is that it is that it is all too easy to discoversites that are nearly as dangerous as this week's Absolute Shocker.



These two morons would certainly want to be good mates!

You'd also hope that they've made sure their wills are up-to-date because working like this iscertain to bring on a couple of early funerals.

And by the way, how did they get to the ladder in the first place?

These blokes have clearly missed their calling. They belong in the circus, not in theconstruction industry.

Absolute Shocker of the Week, 5 April 2002


Traffic management for the unloading of construction materials and equipment is amajor issue, not only for the safety of workers, but also for the safety of the generalpublic.

This series of photos, taken recently in one of Melbourne's western suburbs, is a text-book case of how not to do it.

The semi-trailer loaded with pavers is parked slap-bang in the middle of a major four-lane arterial road during a time of frequent traffic. There are no hazard signs orbarriers around the truck. And there is no-one to direct the traffic.

All of which adds up to an Absolute Shocker.

Absolute Shocker of the Week, 19 April 2002


This week's Absolute Shocker is a text-book example of how the highly dangeroustask of asbestos removal should never, ever be carried out.

This is the disastrous scene that a WorkSafe Victoria inspector found recently on asite in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick.

The cowboys responsible for this fiasco had exposed themselves and the generalpublic to airborne asbestos fibres. But not content with the risk of a slow and painfuldeath from asbestosis, they shortened their odds by using the stack of pallets as their"scaffold".

Absolute Shocker of the Week, 3 May 2002


This week’s absolute shocker comes to us from a catering company in Victoria. This combination fire extinguisher and electric hot water heater was discovered in a contract food vender’s van during a regular safety audit of contractor’s equipment. The contractor was immediately terminated. Unfortunately this is not an isolated occurrence. We have been informed that this is the second device of this type discovered by the same company!



This week’s absolute shocker goes a long way to explaining why the misuse of portable ladders and the failure to adequately safeguard workers at heights are amongst the most common causes of deaths and serious injuries. What sort of person could possibly wish to take this sort of risk with his life? And what sort of contractor would quote a job on this basis?



This Absolute Shocker, spotted on a Melbourne eastern suburbs housing constructionsite, depicts a recipe for disaster.

As best as we can determine, the recipe goes something like this:

Ingredients

• One truck of roof trusses with vehicle loading crane.• One driver only.• A building site with no safe access to the upper levels.

Method

1. Send one truck driver to the site without a dogman, making sure that the builderhas also not supplied a dogman or anyone else to assist.

2. Make sure that no safety equipment, such as taglines or remote-release shacklesare provided, so that the driver has no alternative but to work at height.

3. Make sure there is no ladder or other means of safe access provided to help him.

4. Keep your fingers crossed that he gets the job done without killing himself orbeing left injured on the site with no one to ring for an ambulance.

Absolute Shocker of the Week, 14 June 2002


Despite us living in the age of high technology, crack testing, x-rays, ultra-sound, mag-particle examination, etc, some people still seem to revert to the sort of welding “techniques” colloquially referred to as “cocky poop”. Unbelievable as it seems, this was one company’s attempt to repair a bent lacing member in the lattice boom of a tower crane destined for erection for a 30-storey construction project. We doubt whether those responsible for this sorry effort had bothered to read WorkSafe Victoria’s Alert, Welding Failure in Lifting and Pressure Equipment, published in June 2000 and still accessible from WorkSafe’s website:

www.workcover.vic.gov.au And they probably would never have bothered reading AS/NZS 1554.1, Structural Steel Welding – Part 1: Welding of Steel Structures, which can be purchased on- line from Standards Australia’s website:

www.standards.com.au Not that you’d need to be a welding expert to immediately classify this as an Absolute Shocker!


The Construction Safety Circulation Service


This week’s Absolute Shocker should convince anyone that needed convincing that ignoring the well-established rules for excavation and trenching safety is simply dicing with death. This photo was published in our Construction Incidents Around the World, No. 15, 2002. It involves an incident on 15 May on a housing development site near Pittsburgh, USA. Three brothers who own their own excavating business were laying water lines. The trench was around 1.8 metres deep, but the excavated sandy soil (spoil) was piled up to around 3 metres without any set-back from the trench. Two of the brothers were in this trench when the wall of spoil collapsed without warning, burying one brother to over waist-height. By sheer good fortune, the second brother managed to crawl out and raise the alarm. The injured man was rescued and air-lifted to hospital. The third brother is the bloke with the pony-tail, seen here no doubt thanking his lucky stars that he didn’t have to tell their mother that two of her sons had been killed by their (and his) own stupidity. There can be only three possible causes: ignorance, incompetence or irresponsibility. Either way, these three cowboys are responsible for an Absolute Shocker. Let’s hope that the construction company to whom they were sub-contracting has now realised what can happen when you engage cowboy contractors .



If you were wondering why plastering workers have a higher incidence of injuries than most other construction workers, or why WorkSafe Victoria recently conducted a blitz on plastering work, this week’s Absolute Shocker might help to answer these questions. This photo was snapped by a WorkSafe Construction Industry Program inspector during a visit to a Mornington Peninsula construction site in the township of Rye during the plastering blitz. The worker’s feet are about 3.5 metres above the floor level. The ladder is unsecured and is on a gradient far steeper than the recommended one horizontal to four vertical. Question: What sort of builder or plastering contractor would think for one moment that this was an acceptable working platform to carry out two-handed work at this height? Not to mention the long-term effects of supporting the body-weight of a person on the narrow rungs of a ladder for repetitive and lengthy work tasks. Answer: The sort of builder or plastering contractor to whom we say “see you in court” if we catch you doing it again.

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