Chelmsford contractor fined for role in worker death
A Chelmsford-based contractor has been fined $175,000 in provincial court for its role in a 2019 site accident that led to the death of a worker.
R.M. Belanger Limited is an infrastructure-construction company that specializes in building roads and bridges in Northern Ontario. The accident occurred in August 2019 on the company’s jobsite at Angler Creek on Highway 17, west of Marathon.
The project scope of work called for the contractor to assemble a 120-foot temporary modular bridge that would be installed to carry road traffic in order to accommodate replacement of the existing culvert. The bridge was assembled on the road on the east side of the creek, then pushed across the creek on rollers and set down on concrete landing pads. Eight Belanger employees worked on the site.
The bridge was moved across the creek and was set down on pillars of wood cribbing at each corner. ‘Bottle jacks’ were to be used to jack the bridge down in stages, removing cribbing as it was lowered. Seven of the eight crew were engaged in this operation. A supervisor was directing the workers in the lowering of the bridge.
One of the workers on the crew was not involved in moving or jacking the bridge but was involved on the site as a driver, and bringing other workers tools and water as needed.
Lowering the bridge was to be accomplished by using two bottle jacks on each corner. One jack would take the weight of the bridge while cribbing was removed from one side of each cribbing tower. A second jack would then take the weight while the first jack was removed and cribbing taken from the other side of the tower. The bridge would thus be lowered one step at a time by releasing pressure with a valve on the bottle jack.
The lowering of the bridge was being coordinated by the supervisor. At each lowering stage, the bridge was fully supported by a bottle jack on each corner. The supervisor was using only a level on one end of the bridge in giving instructions to workers on all corners regarding the rate of movement of each corner. No mechanical means was being used to coordinate the rate of movement as between the various jacks.
At one point in the process, one of the workers identified that a jack at the northwest corner was starting to lean. The supervisor went to that corner to observe the jack. While the supervisor turned to return to the work station, that jack tipped over, allowing the 18-ton bridge to collapse. It tipped from the jacks at three of the corners.
The worker who was not involved in moving or jacking was sitting on the concrete landing pad and was crushed by the frame of the bridge, suffering fatal injuries. Another worker suffered non-critical injuries as the bridge fell and moved to the side.
The worker who died had about 15 minutes earlier been sitting on a pile of discarded cribbing but had been asked to move.
An investigation by the Ministry of Labour, Training, and Skills Development could not determine the exact cause of the bridge collapse. However, the investigation found a number of factors contributed to the collapse and fatality, including allowing a worker not involved in the movement of a structure to be near that structure, allowing workers to work underneath an object supported by bottle jacks, failing to use a mechanical means of coordinating the jacking process, and exceeding the maximum recommended distance for jacking an object.
The offence isn’t the first for R.M. Belanger. In February of this year, the firm was convicted under the Occupational Health and Safety Act for its role in an accident that led to the death of a worker at a golf course in Sudbury. The firm was fined $210,000 for its role in that incident.
In addition to the fine levied against the R.M. Belanger for the bridge incident, the company will also be required to pay a 25-percent victim surcharge that will be credited to a fund that helps victims of crime.