Electrical company fined $300K following worker's death

A tragedy at a South Australian worksite has resulted in a $300,000 fine for an electrical company.

Following a SafeWork SA investigation, JD Finlay Electrical was charged for a breach of section 32 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2012. The southern Adelaide electrical company was sentenced in the South Australian Employment Court on 20 November.

The charges related to a failure to take adequate steps to identify the hazard created by the work environment and to provide adequate training and safety documents in the performance of the task required to be undertaken.

On 1 June 2022, JD Finlay Electrical had sent the worker to a site where he was tasked with pulling electrical cables through conduit pipes that terminated within a service pit. The pit was not a standard one; access to it was partially obstructed by the presence of an electrical distribution board (EDB) above it.

In order to pull the electrical cables through the conduit pipes, the worker lay on the ground and leaned into the pit.

As he attempted to extricate himself from the pit, he was unable to do so, and died at the scene of positional asphyxiation.

The particular tasks to be undertaken had not been assessed by a supervisor, nor had any risk assessment for the job been undertaken prior to the workers attending the site.

Additionally, a trained supervisor was not onsite when the incident occurred, and the pit cover had not been removed to assess what lay beneath it.

In his sentencing remarks, Deputy President Judge Crawley noted that JD Finlay Electrical had shown genuine contrition and remorse and had addressed deficiencies in its systems since the fatality.

He said the failure to undertake an appropriate risk assessment and the reliance upon a worker without appropriate training to identify and manage the risks for himself was a circumstance common to many cases.

“Of critical significance to my mind was sending a work crew to undertake a job in a non-standard workplace without prior risk assessment or accompanied by someone trained in risk assessment,” Crawley said.

“That a worker may lean at least partially into the pit should have been obvious. That a worker may then slip into the pit headfirst was a foreseeable risk. With a pit being 1240 mm deep, the potential for serious injury was real.”

SafeWork SA Executive Director Glenn Farrell said tragedies like this one served to emphasise and justify the heavy onus placed on business owners to ensure work activities were appropriately assessed for all known and new hazards — as well as the significant penalties for which they would be liable if they failed to adequately control those hazards.

“There was a clear failure to take adequate steps to identify the hazard created by the work environment in this instance, and to provide alternative means of undertaking the task without a worker needing to enter the pit in this manner,” Farrell said.

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