Cambridge company fined $150,000 for 2021 incident
A Cambridge-based construction company has been fined $150,000 in connection with an incident that led to a worker’s injuries.
Regional Sewer and Watermain Ltd. of Whistle Bare Road pled guilty in a Kitchener courtroom to a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The company will also a pay a 25% surcharge.
The incident occurred on a worksite on Myers Road in Cambridge in November 2021.
At the time, the company’s construction crew was on site when a supervisor instructed them to remove a decommissioned hydro service to an existing building at the project.
The foreperson asked an equipment operator to meet them by the building with a front-end loader.
When the operator arrived with the front-end loader, the foreperson stepped into the bucket and gave a hand signal to raise the bucket, which brought them up high enough to cut the wires to the hydro service on the building.
When the foreperson finished cutting the wires, the wires recoiled, causing the foreperson to lose balance and fall out of the bucket to the ground below.
Section 107 of Ontario Regulation 213/91 prohibits workers from using the bucket of a front-end loader as a work platform in this manner.
Regional Sewer and Watermain was found to have failed, as a constructor, to ensure that the measures and procedures prescribed by section 107 of Ontario Regulation 213/91 were carried out at the project, contrary to section 23(1)(a) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.