Date of incident: December 2020
Notice of incident number: 2020165410014
Employers: Engineering firm; industrial construction firm

Incident summary
A worker was struck and seriously injured by a piece of mobile equipment (a dozer) during the construction of a new roadway at an oil product distribution and storage facility.

Investigation conclusions

Cause

• Failure to adhere to safe work procedures for working around mobile equipment. The engineering firm had established safe work procedures for working around mobile equipment. The safe work procedures required positive communication, either verbally or through hand signals. The dozer operator stated that he did not see the worker who was struck at all before the incident, which may be attributed to the blind spots on the dozer. Had the safe work procedures been adhered to, a positive form of communication would have been established with the dozer operator, and the dozer operator would have been informed of the worker’s work plan to go into the hazardous area.

Contributing factors

• Inadequate oversight by engineering employer. The engineering firm had a health and safety program for its workers. However, the firm failed to provide adequate oversight to ensure its safe work procedures were being adhered to in the field. The firm’s health and safety management system failed to ensure oversight of the supervisor on site with regard to occupational health and safety.
• Inadequate controls implemented. On the day of the incident, the industrial construction firm failed to ensure its own controls were implemented for the congested area where the incident occurred. These controls were identified in the project-specific safety plan and during spotter training and the morning safety meeting, as well as in the field-level hazard assessments. At the time of the incident, none of the identified controls that could have prevented the worker from entering the hazardous work area, such as trained spotters, two-way radios, or sandwich boards, had been implemented.

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