Apprentice death puts safety in focus

Following sentencing of those found responsible for the death of a teenage apprentice on a Bay of Plenty building site, WorkSafe says the construction sector needs to continue stepping up its health and safety game

Ethan Perham-Turner was killed when timber framing weighing 350kg fell on him at a residential building site in Ōmokoroa in March 2022. The 19-year-old was just four months into an apprenticeship with Inspire Building Limited at the time of the accident.

A WorkSafe investigation found the risk was heightened by the framing being manually installed around the site and a temporary support brace being removed just prior to the fatal incident. When one frame knocked another, it fell on the teenage apprentice.

High risk work

Inspire was providing building labour for the main contractor, Thorne Group. Both were charged for health and safety failures in relation to the death. The businesses should have consulted each other on the framing installation plan and ensured a mechanical aid (such as a Hiab crane truck) was used.

“The death of a worker so young is an indictment on the construction sector. Ethan was new to the job and new to the task of manoeuvring framing. He should have been provided with what he needed to be safe,” said WorkSafe Area Investigation Manager, Paul West.

“The safest way would have been to mechanically lift the framing into place, given its weight. This can come at little to no extra cost. In this case, the supplier delivering the framing had a Hiab and could have lifted it into place if asked.

“The high number of deaths and injuries tell us construction is a very dangerous industry. WorkSafe has seen other similar incidents, where workers handling large or heavy frames have been paralysed or killed.

“It is unacceptable that companies are not identifying the risks and providing workers with a safe workplace. We can only hope the death of a very young apprentice might motivate the step change required to improve the sector’s health and safety performance,” said West.

Charged and fined

Following the incident, Inspire and Thorne Group were sentenced at Tauranga District Court. Inspire was fined $30,000 due to financial incapacity and Thorne Group was fined $210,000 – with reparations of $130,000 paid to Perham-Turner’s family and $15,072 to a co-worker. Both entities were charged under sections 36(1)(a), s 48(1) and (2)(c) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.

The charge was: “Being a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU), having a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers who work for the PCBU, including Perham-Turner, while the workers were at work in the business or undertaking, namely erecting prefabricated timber frames, did fail to comply with that duty, and that failure exposed workers to a risk of death or serious injury.”

Risk management when installing frames and trusses

Risk can be reduced by PCBUs in the following ways:

• Planning how the work will be carried out safely – as required in consultation with other PCBUs.

• Involving their workers in the discussion or task analysis of how the trusses will be installed safely.

• Taking advantage of readily available mechanical equipment, such as cranes to assist in installing trusses.

Before starting the task, PCBUs must complete a risk assessment and review their controls. It is strongly advised PCBUs eliminate the risk of manual work through engineering controls.

Whenever reasonably practicable, a crane should be used to assist with frame and truss installation. Most PCBUs already use cranes to transport materials to construction sites and the cost of further hire is minimal next to the safety and productivity benefits.

Further minimisation controls include ensuring the team responsible for the erection of trusses has the relevant experience and training and that the work is supervised by a competent person.

If the use of a crane is not reasonably practicable then risk of harm can be minimised by:

• Using an adequate number of workers to install the trusses, so the heavy trusses aren’t left to be handled by an inadequate number of people.

• Having adequate scaffolding and safety netting properly installed to enable trusses to be placed and secured safely.

• Planning how the trusses will be erected and braced.

This article is a summary of WorkSafe news and advice, and is reprinted with permission from WorkSafe New Zealand. For more information, visit worksafe.govt.nz