Last summer, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) began testing a fully mobile work zone barrier system during a concrete repair project on Highway 115, southwest of Peterborough.

The new system is fully mobile, consisting of a wheeled unit, which is pulled by a standard truck tractor. The unit can be deployed relatively quickly and, because of its reversible axles, it can easily be reconfigured for either right or left applications in about half an hour.

These new mobile units, which are bright orange to alert drivers that road work is taking place, reduce the need for road crews to set up a Temporary Concrete Barrier (TCB), which means they can finish road work and reopen a lane in less time.  By adding panels, the size of the work zone can be expanded to as much as 31 metres, and the systems are also customizable, including such options as portable message signs, auxiliary lighting and a privacy barrier. The unit meets U.S. National Cooperative Highway Research Program 350 TL-3 crash test requirements, as well.

The mobile work zone barriers increase the safety of maintenance and construction crews, according to a number of test projects, and past use by others. The state of California has been deploying such mobile barriers since 2004, for example, and they have proven to be very time effective and safe. California refers to its mobile barriers as “Balsi Beams,” because they were developed after worker Mark Balsi was killed by a motorist while picking up trash along the highway. California’s Balsi Beam was among those demonstrated to MTO officials at a conference several years ago, which led to last summer’s trial.

Construction crews have so far found it easy to adapt to the devices, and feel very confident working behind them.  The Highway 115 trial project proved the units to be so effective that the contractor’s schedule was advanced, and work was completed ahead of time, because they were able to eliminate the work necessary in placing and removing the TCB.

Due to the success of the initial mobile barrier trial, MTO expects to expand their use for projects such as pothole filling, pavement testing, crack sealing, bridge and guide rail repairs, and even accident scene investigations.

Photos of the mobile work zone barrier system in action can be found here.

On Tuesday, January 18, emergency crews from La Ronge rescued a 61-year-old worker after he had been trapped for more than eight hours in a five-story chute that leads down to a rock crusher at a northern Saskatchewan gold mill.

RCMP responded to a call from the Jolu gold mill, which is operated by Golden Band Resources, Inc. and is located approximately 130 km north of La Ronge, shortly before 3 p.m. The worker, who is employed by Kitsaki Procon Joint Venture as a welder, was working above the crushing machine when the ground beneath him gave way. He slid down the chute and was pinned against the wall, buried in ore from the waist down.

According to the La Ronge fire department, the space was so small that Arsenault had to do most of the actual digging himself, with rescue crews lifting the buckets of ore out as he did so. They felt they had to move carefully to prevent further problems. This made the rescue effort was long and grueling. Eventually, when the worker was able to get one leg free, he squeezed his other leg out, and rescuers were able to use a harness to lift him out the rest of the way.

Finally, at about 11:30 p.m., the worker was above ground, where he was taken to hospital and treated for hypothermia and mild frostbite, and then released.

Operations at the mill were suspended Wednesday, as they looked into the cause of the incident.

As has been promised, Albertans will soon have a new website to check out; one designed to provide them with greater access to employers’ injury and fatality records.

Of course, as usual some folks still have no plans to be satisfied. Some feel that the information will be too limited, and won’t offer an adequate picture of most companies’ safety records. The Alberta Federation of Labour, for example, has issued a statement saying that the government’s “watered-down” website falls short of what they promised eight years ago, and that it doesn’t hold employers accountable.  They would like to see more information on the site, such as specific work site inspection reports, safety violations and enforcement orders

Overall, the provincial government plans to publish partial safety records covering 2005-2009 for roughly 125,000 employers covered by the Workers’ Compensation Board.  Nearly 12,000 businesses that carry voluntary insurance coverage, such as farms, advertising agencies and flyer distributors, won’t be included.

The new site, which should be up and running by the end of September, will include the following information:

• The number of recorded lost-time work injury and illness claims by a company;
• Each company’s lost-time claim rate, which helps measure the likelihood of an occupational injury or disease. The claim rate will then be compared with industry and provincial averages. This number will not be included for employers with fewer than 40 full-time equivalent workers.
• The number of fatalities recorded by each company;
• Whether a business holds a certificate of recognition, which acknowledges an employer has an audited safety program.

The creation of this web site comes as the province faces greater scrutiny of its efforts to protect workers. Last spring, the province received scathing criticism after an Auditor General’s investigation found Alberta Employment wasn’t sufficiently going after employers with poor safety records. That report also voiced concerns about Alberta’s safety certificate program.

Over the past decade, 1,285 Alberta workers have been killed on the job. In 2008 alone, the province had the second-highest worker fatality rate, with a 26-year high 166 workers killed on the job that year alone. Every year, more Albertans die from workplace accidents than from murder.

Following criticism that the provincial government has been lax with its investigations of problem employers, Alberta is shaking up its occupational health and safety department.

The shake-up began earlier this month, when executive director Dan Clarke left his post. The government is now advertising for a replacement, and it sees the replacement as part of a structural overhaul of occupational health to make it focus more on compliance and enforcement of safety rules in the workplace.  It hopes to have a new executive director by the end of the summer.

There are many who would say it’s about time. Alberta currently has one of the highest rates of worker deaths in Canada with 166 deaths in 2008 alone. This past April, an auditor general’s report said the department was lax on enforcement and even suggested they had hidden the true number of companies that refused to make safety improvements.  The review showed that the department had suspended compliance orders filed against dozens of companies with high injury rate for no apparent reason. But when they looked more closely, they discovered that many of them were suspended just to make its own statistics look better, and in a number of cases, the compliance orders were reopened in the next fiscal year with no evidence that the companies took any action to improve worker safety.

The auditor general also found that in many cases, companies that ignored safety violations were still getting rebates from the province under a program that rewards firms with good worker safety records. Violations that went unchecked for years ran the gamut, ranging from a lack of hearing and eye protection to fire and explosion hazards.

Alberta Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk  has promised to announce more details with regard to the overhaul in the coming weeks.

After one of the most dangerous years in the city’s construction history, Calgary’s manager of building regulations has called on Alberta provincial officials to increase fines significantly for those companies found guilty of safety-code violations especially those, such as failing to secure building materials, that not only endanger workers, but the public at large.  He notes that the maximum $15,000 penalty for potentially deadly violations is significantly lower than for breaches of other safety laws, and doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the incidents.

This call comes in the wake of a series of incidents of falling debris that have occurred in the last year at high rise construction sites throughout Calgary, including falling steel that killed 3-year-old Michelle Krsek and injured an uncle last August.

The latest case being investigated by the city involves an online video, recorded last October but just recently discovered and passed on to authorities that was forwarded to city authorities, depicting construction workers with Skyway Canada horsing around recklessly on a Beltline tower. In the video (which has been removed from the YouTube video site), one worker actually tosses a metal clamp across scaffolds and jokes about the potential disaster if the tool had fallen and struck a passer-by. After learning of the video, Skyway Canada suspended two of the workers seen in the video. A third worker visible in the video had already left the company.

In addition to increased fines, city officials would also like to see greater reporting of incidents to the city. Currently, when near-misses or injuries occur, companies are required to report to the provincial Occupational Health and Safety office, but not to the city.  The city would like to see mandatory reporting to the city. The Calgary city council doesn’t have the legal authority to require such a thing, so the city is currently forced to rely on a voluntary reporting program for the city’s construction industry.

The mayor of Windsor, Ontario, Eddie Francis, declared a state of emergency July 8 after a parking garage collapsed at about 10:40 a.m., crushing numerous cars and sending one person to hospital. The state of emergency allowed the city access to provincial emergency response teams to delve into the wreckage to help search for any victims.

According to witnesses, the only man injured was the operator of a boom truck near a building entrance. He was using the boom truck to prepare for the commencement of building maintenance work when the pavement under his truck gave way. The collapse caused the operator to be thrown from his cab, and he was hanging by his safety belt when rescue workers arrived at the scene. They quickly used a pulley system to lift him to safety, fitted him with a neck brace and transported him to hospital.

Search dogs and a camera-equipped robot combed through the rubble of the underground structure to look for victims. Thankfully, the dogs found no one in the lower levels.

The aftermath of the collapse was a remarkable sight, according to witnesses. Several vehicles that had been parked on the ground level were leaning into the hole, while others sat precariously on yellow steel pillars. As time passed, the hole slowly grew bigger and the cars slid farther in.

A nearby apartment building was evacuated as a precaution, with tenants put up in nearby hotels until the building could be declared safe.

Municipal officials refused to speculate on the cause of the accident, but noted that the parking lot had a lot of cars, and that the likely cause was that the structure wasn’t capable of handling the load. The boom truck weighs about 10,000 kilograms.

Lacombe County, Alberta road worker Robert Ray died last week when the machine he was operating tipped on its side, although it’s not clear that the tipping of the machine caused his death or his death caused the machine to tip.

The accident occurred at approximately 11:30 am on June 19, as a county work crew was repairing a county road. Ray, an equipment operator employed by the county for more than 12 years, was driving a large packer when it left the roadway and rolled onto its side. A packer is a large piece of road construction equipment outfitted with a large metal wheel, used to compact the dirt in road construction projects.

After the accident, the worker was removed from the packer, but was pronounced dead at the scene, although he did not appear to have been crushed by the machine.  There were suggestions that Ray’s death was caused by a health problem that manifested as he operated the packer. At least one witness noted that he “was acting kind of strangely that day.” He was seen stopping and rubbing his head several times before the accident.

The investigation is ongoing.

WorkSafeBC has named a new chair to its board of directors, as George Morfitt has replaced Roslyn Kunin, who has been the organization’s chair for the last two years.

Morfitt is no newcomer to WorkSafeBC. He has been a WorkSafeBC director for nearly four years, and in recent months served as the board’s vice-chair.  An adjunct professor for the University of Victoria, Morfitt also serves as an advisor to the School of Public Administration. Before that, he spent time as auditor general of British Columbia, where he led the implementation of measures to bring greater transparency in governance and accountability, including new auditing guidelines for government ministries, Crown corporations and public agencies, including WorkSafeBC. He also recently served as a councilor for the Health Council of Canada.

The outgoing chair, Kunin, whose term ended in May, was WorkSafeBC’s longest serving board member, with seven years on the board, including the last two as chair.  Her tenure saw a decline in B.C’s injury rate, which reached the lowest level on record, as well as a significant reduction in employer premium rates.

WorkSafeBC is an independent provincial statutory agency governed by a board of directors that serves about 2.3 million workers and more than 200,000 employers.

As just about any company who’s experienced them can tell you, workplace accidents can be devastating to your company.  Besides the obvious hit to the bottom line when they bring your  operation to a standstill and force your company to pay a fine, the results can be even more tragic, such as when they involve serious injury or even loss of life. The number one priority of any business should be to avoid accidents, and one of the best ways to do so is to conduct periodic safety audits.

A safety audit should examine the entire work area and should cover all activities required in that workplace in order to optimize safety, to make sure everything is up to government standards and complies to the company’s safety policy.. Everything should be checked and all workers should be involved, and encouraged to put their best effort into making sure that nothing is missed.

There are obviously many ways to approach safety audits. But there are a number of elements that should be included in any workplace safety audit.

First, you need a plan. Gather all relevant company safety information, and define the scope of the audit. Then assemble an audit team to review all company policies and procedures, legislation, standards, guidelines and practice codes relevant to your workplace. Be sure the audit team is equipped with all special tools, equipment and safety gear to conduct the audit effectively and safely, and put in place escort arrangements and make sure the team familiarizes themselves with the site before the audit. The team should also know all the key role players, clarify the audit objectives and nail down the approach to be followed during the audit.

The audit team should then review all incidents and accidents that occurred during the audit period. This is an essential aspect of understanding the uncontrolled risks in the workplace they plan to audit. They will also have to review documents, interview staff and conduct physical inspections to determine whether or not all safety management system elements are correctly implemented.

A truly successful safety audit should involve every employee. While it’s true that outsiders can provide some perspective that everyday workers might miss, the workers themselves are often the best judges of what is and isn’t safe, and they will know what needs to be changed. Often, workers are reluctant to participate in such audits if they feel they are being second-guessed or their opinion isn’t being properly respected, so be sure to encourage their participation in the process, stressing the importance of the audit and putting them at ease about their participation.

The value of a safety audit is that it evaluates workplace safety in real time. And once a report is issued, take it seriously, and correct areas of weakness as soon as possible. Many times, the audit report will recommend more comprehensive training and this should be scheduled quickly.

No company can sit on its record when it comes to safety, and periodic audits should be part of your overall safety strategy. Without a regular check of your system, weaknesses will develop and the likelihood of an accident will increase greatly.

In what has become a recurring pattern at high-rise construction sites in downtown Calgary, on May 15th a steelworker on the 45th floor of the Bow Building  failed to tether his two-kilogram spud wrench, and lost his grip on the tool. As a result, it fell with such force that it bounced off the concrete, hit a cement apron in front of Calgary police headquarters across the street and crashed through the station’s front window.  Thankfully, no one was hurt or killed.

For its part, Matthews Development, the steelworker’s employer, acknowledged that the worker had failed to follow strict rules by not securing the wrench to his belt. They filed an incident report immediately, and announced later that the worker had been “professionally disciplined” internally.  The incident has also prompted the company to begin safety re-training of all workers at the site.

OHS is conducting a full investigation, focused on which steps employers can take to make sure such an incident doesn’t happen again. As you can guess based on where the wrench landed, the initial investigation was performed by Calgary police. City of Calgary building inspectors are also looking into the incident, and promising new rules and greater enforcement, as concerns about public safety around high-rise construction sites in the city continue to build.

In August 2009, a three-year-old girl was killed as she walked down the street and was hit by a bundle of steel roofing materials that had been blown from the 22nd storey of a construction site during a wind storm.  Her father and seven-year-old brother were also badly injured in that incident.

Later that month, a large pane of glass fell from a construction site at the Palliser South tower, causing shards of glass to rain on the sidewalk and street below.  A month later, another incident at the Bow Building site saw a small crane nearly fall from the building, with a tether preventing it from falling three stories to the ground below. While the crane didn’t fall, it did drop its load, a large pane of glass, and smashed another window as it angled. Then, within days of that incident, a piece of scaffolding fell from the 19th storey of the Penn West Tower and crashed onto a parkade ramp. Thankfully, no one was injured in any of these incidents, but the potential was there.

Recently, the city, OHS and the Calgary Construction Association formed a task force to study the situation, and make recommendations on improving safety. Their goal is to develop a best practices guide in four areas: 1) materials and equipment on site; 2) hoisting of material; 3) hoarding; and 4)traffic control management.