Coreslab Structures fined $255K for 2021 fatality
A Dundas-based precast concrete producer has been fined for its role in an incident that led to a workplace fatality in 2021.
Coreslab Structures (Ont.) Inc. entered a guilty plea in Provincial Offences Court in Hamilton. The company will pay a fine of $225,000, plus a 25-percent victim surcharge, for failing to ensure control switches on a concrete mixer were locked out, as per the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
The incident occurred on October 18, 2021 at Coreslab’s plant in Dundas.
The company uses a steel concrete mixing tank called a planetary concrete mixer in the production of precast concrete products. The mixer requires cleaning at the end of every shift. Cleaning inside requires a worker to go into the mixer through one of two top entry hatches.
To ensure the mixer is safe to clean, Coreslab developed a step-by-step safe-cleaning procedure and provided it to workers appointed to clean the equipment. The safe cleaning procedure in place prior to the incident included turning the mixer main panel dial to “off”, applying the worker’s own lock out tag out device to the main panel lever, physically turning and removing two keys from the main panel, and placing those keys into each of the hatch locks to allow access into the mixer.
Performed on their own, each of these safety steps will stop the mixer from operating. However, Coreslab trained workers to perform all of the steps.
Prior to the incident, both hatch locks had ceased working due to a build-up of concrete and concrete dust within the locking mechanisms, and both had been removed for repair. As a result, access into the mixer did not, at that time, require unlocking the hatch locks with the keys from the main panel to permit temporary access to the operating mixer.
On October 18, 2021, a worker was found fatally injured inside a mixer. There were no eyewitnesses to the incident.
Section 76(a) of Ontario Regulation 851 requires that where the starting of a machine, transmission machinery, device or thing may endanger the safety of a worker, control switches or other control mechanism must be locked out.
Coreslab Structures was found to have failed, as an employer, to ensure that the measures and procedures prescribed by section 76(a) of the regulation were carried out in the workplace.