Earlier this year we reported on the Geelong construction company EJ Lyons & Sons Pty Ltd and the collapse of a section of hoarding at a major construction site on Moorabool Street, for which the Geelong Magistrates’ Court imposed a fine on the company of $25,000.
At the time of the offence the applicable maximum penalty for failing to provide a safe workplace was approximately $1.6M.
The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed the sentence.
The hoarding collapse came a year after a contracted Scaffolder had raised safety concerns with EJ Lyons about the scaffolding to which hoarding had been attached despite the scaffold not being designed or engineered to support the hoarding. The Scaffolder warned EJ Lyons that the weight of the hoarding undermined the greater structure of the scaffold. The Scaffolder also recommended that EJ Lyons engage an engineer in relation to bracing the hoarding in order to protect the public and workers. EJ Lyons did not engage an engineer and the hoarding remained in place for the next year.
In December 2022 the scaffold company removed the scaffold, requesting that the hoarding be untied from the scaffolding and advising that the hoarding needed to be secured. Two days later the site shut down for the year, the site was cleaned up and secured, including 16 mesh panels which were dismantled and stored behind and against the hoarding. Six days later the hoarding collapsed.
The 20m long and 3.5m high section of hoarding collapsed onto the pedestrian footpath, damaging three cars and narrowly missing a pedestrian by only seconds.
Upon appeal the County Court at Geelong set aside the original orders of the Magistrates Court and resentenced EJ Lyons to pay a fine of $50,000.
The County Court noted that the risks were significant and put the general public at risk. The site of the construction was on a major thoroughfare in the City of Geelong during the Christmas period when there was considerable traffic. Despite being warned one year earlier and again eight days prior to the collapse, Lyons Construction did not undertake any reviews of the hazard, nor did they seek advice from a suitably qualified structural engineer. Although no one was injured in the collapse, that was good fortune alone – this incident was a near miss in a situation where the collapse was highly likely, and injury or death the potential outcome.
Read more: Fine doubled to $50,000 after hoarding collapse | WorkSafe Victoria