Ottawa construction company fined $90,000 for worker’s critical injuries

An Ottawa construction company has been hit with a hefty fine after a worker suffered critical injuries after being hit with a reversing bulldozer. 

Aecon Construction Ontario East Limited on 3232 Carp Rd. — a business of asphalt paving and construction — is now ordered to pay up the $90,000 fine stemming from the June 11, 2018 incident, to which the company had pled guilty for.

The court also imposed a 25 per cent victim surcharge in its verdict Friday, which will be credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime. 

According to details released by the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development under the Ontario Government, on the day of the incident, a worker and an equipment operator were working as a team on a part of Highway 417 in Ottawa when a worker was tasked with taking elevation readings using a GPS laser and marking out the readings on the ground, while the equipment operator was operating a bulldozer. 

The worker taking the readings could not get a signal for the GPS and attempted to locate a signal by walking to different areas of the site. While doing that, the worker was facing the back of the bulldozer. 

The bulldozer operator was in the process of back-blading material, a process where the operator pushes material forward and then runs the blade of the material in reverse. 

The operator placed the bulldozer in reverse — which activated the back-up alarm — looked over his shoulder and started to reverse after not noticing anyone behind. 

The back-up alarm could not be heard over the noise of Highway 417. 

The worker taking the readings was knocked to the ground. 

The bulldozer operator noticed two survey workers running toward the bulldozer and he stopped the machine. When they saw a hardhat on the ground, the driver exited the bulldozer and found the worker on the ground. 

As a result, the worker suffered critical injuries. 

A visibility and line-of-sight was conducted by a Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills ergonomist. They identified any blind spots or areas with an obstructed view from the perspective of the equipment operator. 

The assessment found that the injured worker would not reasonably have been noticed by the equipment operator while the bulldozer was reversing and the ability for the operator to view the worker within the rear-view mirror while reversing the bulldozer would have become progressively more obstructed. 

Instead, a signaller should have been used to help the equipment operator, and it was found that Aecon Construction — as an employer — failed to ensure the operator was directed by a signaller.