On 14 November 2024, the defendant, a construction company, was found guilty, following a five-day trial, of failing to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers engaged by it. On 29 April 2025, the court sentenced the defendant for its offending. 

The offending concerned the defendant being engaged to construct related infrastructure, such as public roads, for a railway line. The defendant engaged a company to provide workers. On 8 June 2020, two such workers were tasked with laying geofabric into an area where the road was being upgraded. While, the workers were completing their task, a grader, which was operating nearby, collided with one of the workers and injured the worker’s leg.

The hazard in the workplace was the risk of pedestrian workers being struck by a moving plant.

The court found it was reasonably practicable to eliminate or minimise the risk posed to the worker at the workplace by:

• Instructing the grader operator to stop grading and/or instructing the pedestrian workers to stop the fabric laying task.
• Implementing exclusion zones to separate workers from plant such as barricades to delineate work areas for pedestrian workers and areas where mobile plant was operating.
• Implementing spotters to observe the activity being undertaken.
• Instructing, training and supervising the workers in safe systems of work to ensure systems of work were complied with and/or enforced.
• Providing two-way radios to all workers to use to communicate with each other.

The court considered that the defendant had made a genuine attempt at implementing an adequate safety system at the workplace, notwithstanding that in relation to the incident which occurred on 8 June 2020 the defendant fell short. The court took into account the decades that the defendant operated for without a prior conviction and described the offending as an isolated or momentary breach.

Ultimately, the court imposed a $100,000 fine.

The court also ordered the defendant to pay $19,290.25 in costs to the Office of Industrial Relations, and $99.70 to the clerk of court.

No conviction was recorded.

OWHSP contact: enquiries@owhsp.qld.gov.au