Company fined again for unprotected edge

A construction company has been fined for the second time for not providing edge protection on a construction site.

Diploma Construction breached occupational safety and health regulations by not providing edge protection around a lift shaft. An employee was working at the open edge where he could have fallen 4.5 m to a concrete surface below.

"To make matters worse, this company had already been successfully prosecuted by WorkSafe in 2001 for failing to provide edge protection, and had not learned from that experience," WorkSafe WA commissioner Nina Lyhne said.

"In this case, no one should have been working in the vicinity until the lift shaft had been made safe.

"Although no one was injured in this instance, the risk was very high that any of the people working on the slab at the time could have fallen 4.5 m through the shaft."

The Code of Practice on the Prevention of Fall in Workplaces has existed in WA for the past 17 years, with the original code being initiated as a response to fatalities in the construction industry at the time.

A copy of the code can be obtained at the WorkSafe website.