Ontario Construction News staff writer
A Dundas-based concrete manufacturer has been fined $225,000 after a worker fell into a concrete mixer and died in October 2021.
In Provincial Offences Court in Hamilton, Coreslab pleaded guilty to endangering the safety of a worker. The company will also have to pay a 25 per cent victim surcharge.
Emergency crews were called to the company just at about 6:25 p.m. on Oct. 18, 2021, for reports of an industrial accident, police reported at the time. A worker was found fatally injured inside a Planetary Concrete Mixer. There were no eyewitnesses to the incident.
To ensure the mixer is safe to clean, Coreslab created safe cleaning procedures that were given to workers appointed to clean the equipment. Cleaning inside the mixers – required at the end of each shift – involves a worker getting into the mixer through one of two top entry hatches, the ministry said in a news release on Thursday.
Each step, when performed on its own, stopped the mixer from operating, the ministry said. These steps include physically turning and removing two keys from the main panel and placing them into each of the hatch locks to allow access into the mixer.
Prior to the incident in 2021, both hatch locks had stopped working due to a build-up of concrete and concrete dust within the locking mechanisms, and both had been removed for repair, the ministry said.
“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.”