A traffic controller falls into an excavation pit during a concrete pour. The pit is ten metres deep at its deepest point. A concrete pump has malfunctioned and concrete is spraying unexpectedly. This is what uncontrolled plant failure looks like when the people nearby have no protection from it.

Shoring Co Pty Ltd has been convicted and fined a total of $170,000 in the Industrial Court of NSW following a prosecution by SafeWork NSW. The incident occurred on 26 September 2022, during pouring operations at a worksite where a traffic controller — not even a construction worker, but someone managing traffic in the vicinity — ended up in a pit because the plant they were working near behaved in a way no one had apparently planned for.

The company pleaded guilty to two separate offences under section 32 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. The first related to failing to ensure the health and safety of workers under section 19(1). The second — and this is the part worth paying attention to — related to failing to ensure the health and safety of other persons under section 19(2).

That dual conviction matters. The duty of care under the WHS Act does not apply only to the person you directly employ to do the job at hand. It extends to anyone who might be affected by your operations. A traffic controller standing near your worksite, managing vehicles while you pour concrete, is your responsibility too.

SafeWork Commissioner Janet Schorer was direct in her response: “Risk control measures for falls from heights and when working with and around moving plant and fixed machinery are well known.”

That’s the critical point here. This wasn’t an obscure or unprecedented risk. Working near a concrete pump that could malfunction, adjacent to an open excavation, is a scenario that demands a hierarchy of controls — barriers, exclusion zones, risk assessment, and a safe work method statement that accounts for what happens when the pump fails. None of those things appear to have been adequately in place.

The duty to protect other persons — contractors, visitors, members of the public, traffic controllers — is not a secondary or lesser obligation. It carries the same weight under the Act as the duty to protect direct employees. The $170,000 fine reflects two separate failures of two separate duties.

Shoring Co has the right to appeal against the sentence.