Construction Equipment And Material Handling Blitz

Ministry of Labour inspectors will focus on hazards involving the operation and maintenance of equipment when they visit construction workplaces during June and July 2010. They will also check on the handling of material with that equipment.

Blitz Focus

Incidents involving construction equipment continue to injure and kill Ontario construction workers despite an overall decline in the number of lost-time injuries.

In the upcoming heightened enforcement campaign, ministry inspectors will check for hazards that could result in workers being struck or pinned by material or equipment, or injured by overturning equipment.

Such incidents are often due to insufficient training of operators, insufficient maintenance of equipment or inadequate safety procedures for using equipment.

Inspectors will pay particular attention to semi-skilled or untrained workers (including students) who often operate smaller equipment and assist in handling material. 

Priorities

Inspectors will visit construction sites selected from notice-of-project forms submitted by constructors for projects that cost more than $50,000 in material and labour or take longer than one week.

Inspectors will ensure that equipment operators:

• are properly trained and supervised
• follow manufacturers' operating instructions, and
• have access to — and use — roll-over protection systems (including seatbelts).

Inspectors will also check safety procedures for workers who are:

• working near overhead high-voltage power lines,
• using fall protection or working in trenches, and
• working in the area of construction equipment or public traffic.

Safe At Work Ontario

There is no acceptable rate of injury in Ontario workplaces. Sector- and hazard-specific heightened enforcement campaigns are an important feature of the Safe At Work Ontario strategy.

Since implementation of the strategy in June 2008, the province's team of more than 400 safety inspectors has made more than 184,000 workplace visits, issued nearly 300,000 compliance orders and conducted 17 proactive heightened enforcement campaign inspections.

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