Mainline Development Pty Ltd convicted and fined for unsafe Narre Warren building site
A prominent southeast housing developer has been fined $125,000 after its Narre Warren worksite was found littered with “hazards and trash” and put people at “risk of injury and death”.
South East
Don't miss out on the headlines from South East . Followed categories will be added to My News.
A southeast property developer put the lives of people near a dangerous building site it operated at Narre Warren at risk, a court has heard.
Mainline Developments Pty Ltd was fined $125,000 at the County Court on January 31 after pleading guilty to several offences, including failure to ensure persons other than employees weren’t exposed to risk.
The large-scale Carrum Downs property developer has completed projects in many suburbs including Berwick, Frankston South, Croydon and Kilsyth.
The company fell foul of authorities at its now-complete Tinks Rd development in early 2018.
The development – near Fountain Gate Primary, Fountain Gate Secondary and popular heath spot Dharma Yoga – was visited by WorkSafe inspectors several times between January and March, 2018.
Inspectors observed a tip-truck reverse from Tinks Rd into the site “unassisted” during one of the visits.
Tinks Rd is a “single lane, high-volume” street used by many in the community including parents dropping-off and picking up children from two nearby schools.
The court accepted this created a “risk of injury or death to other road users”.
Inspectors also observed multiple workers working at heights of three metres without ”fall protection” such as guard rails and complete scaffolding.
Inspectors ordered a worker to “get down from the roof” during a visit.
Authorities also discovered unsafe use electricity use, lack of drinking water and an unhygienic toilet which could not be flushed.
The site was also littered with “hazards and trash” which placed workers at high risk of “slips, trips and falls”.
Inspectors issued the project’s former site manager Bill Kantonis with improvement notices before the matter was prosecuted at court.
Mainline Pty Ltd, via its counsel, submitted it’s offending was mitigated because Kantonis was in charge of safety at the site.
The defence also submitted Mainline was less culpable because it was better to “have a system in place that failed than no system at all”.
Judge Kevin Doyle placed little weight on these submissions.
“It seems to me that the company simply trusted Mr Kantonis to establish a safe system,” he said.
“It also seems that there was some indication that all was not right on this work site.
“I’m not of the view that Mainline was a company that disregarded safety issues generally. “However, in my view, in relation to this work site there was no safe systems in place other than the traffic management plan.”
Judge Doyle accepted the prosecutions’s submission that the breaches had the potential to “cause death”.
“Serious aspects of the offending include that the breaches were not confined to one day … workers were therefore exposed to ongoing risk,” he said.
“I accept that the breaches in this case … have the potential to result in serious injury or death and the occurrence of such an event was reasonably likely.”
MORE WORKSAFE INVESTIGATE HORROR CRAIGIEBURN SITE ACCIDENT
CHUBBY DRUG DEALER USED WEIGHT ISSUES TO BEAT JAIL SENTENCE
VILLAGE TRADERS HELP CATCH RUNAWAY ROAD SCOUNDREL
Mainline – which faced fines of $1 million – was also charged with failure of a person who has management or control to ensure the workplace is safe and without risk of health, a rolled up charge of failure to provide a safe work environment and failing to comply with an improvement notice.
Judge Doyle said Mainline had prior convictions, and was “under notice” at the time of the offending.
Judge Doyle said Mainline should be commended for rectifying the issues including terminating Kantonis employment after it learnt of the breaches.