By Gaby Grammeno Contributor

The workplace was an automated warehouse in a Melbourne suburb, one of 15 locations of a global cold chain logistics company, including two in Victoria. The facility consists of numerous automatic conveyor systems used to move palletised stock, with about 70 pedestrian walkways known as ‘footbridges’ or ‘crossover points’ which intersect with the conveyor systems and enable workers to step over the conveyors and access pallets on the conveyor.

In September 2021, a labour hire worker who was training to be an operator was crossing a footbridge that had been obstructed by a pallet when the conveyor suddenly restarted. The pallet knocked him, causing his foot to slip and become trapped in an opening between two rollers. The worker fell backwards and the one-tonne pallet rolled over his leg, crushing it.

WorkSafe Victoria charged the company with four offences (one in the alternative) under the State’s OHS Act, each relating to the company’s failure to provide a working environment without risks to health or safety.

In particular, WorkSafe alleged that it would have been reasonably practicable for the company to install:

  • controls to isolate the conveyor movement at crossover points, so that workers could access and cross the conveyor without the risk of automatic start-up, and/or
  • warning devices that generate a signal before the conveyor starts up again, and/or
  • visual and/or aural alarms to indicate when it was safe, or not safe, to cross.

Alternatively, the company could have provided systems of work for accessing and crossing the conveyors which required:

  • the use of operator panels before crossing to temporarily suspend conveyor movement by switching the plant to manual mode, and/or
  • crossing to occur only after confirmation that manual mode was engaged and that the conveyor had stopped moving.

The company should also have provided workers with adequate information, instruction, training and supervision to enable them to do their work safely.

After the incident, the company installed and implemented a ‘Stepover Request System’ using a control box at the base of the stairs at each crossover point to enable pedestrians to stop and restart the conveyor using a red/green light and buzzer sound to indicate when it was safe to cross.

It also trained machine operators in automated plant awareness and safe systems of work with conveyors.

The Stepover Request System was installed and implemented at a cost of $255,000 across both Melbourne sites, and the training was implemented at an estimated cost of $56,000. 

The enforceable undertaking

The company offered WorkSafe an enforceable undertaking under s 16 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 in lieu of a prosecution. The undertaking sets out how the company intended to address the alleged breach and prevent such an event occurring again.

The first commitment of the undertaking focused specifically on the prevention of any further incidents involving entanglement in the conveyor.

Recognising that the effectiveness of its newly implemented Stepover Request System depended on workers’ compliance and could be circumvented, it proposed to implement a higher order engineering control measure to supplement the existing system and mitigate against any instances of inattentiveness or attempted non-compliance. 

A second element of the undertaking concerned working safely in low oxygen environments such as those found in some parts of the company’s facilities. Building on work already done by the company in reviewing its medical fitness-for-work criteria and developing an appropriate work/rest regime, the company proposed to engage an independent expert occupational physician to carry out a study on working safely in low oxygen environments, thereby filling a gap in the current existing industry knowledge around the relationship between cold (-23°C) and hypoxic areas and how this affects the human body.

This initiative is to be supported by convening an independent expert panel to review the literature on safe working in cold and hypoxic environments and prepare a report for WorkSafe, which could use it to develop guidance material and/or a Code of Practice, or share the output with the broader fresh food storage and logistics industry, as well as the document archive storage industry.

In addition, the company proposed to donate $30,000 to the OHS Body of Knowledge with the aim of delivering benefits to industry and the community.

The company undertook to spend at least $293,000 on these undertakings, which will be monitored by WorkSafe.

What it means for employers

Businesses using conveyor systems and those with workers in cold or low oxygen environments may be able to improve their own health and safety management systems by studying the proposals in this undertaking and its output when that is made public.

Read the enforceable undertaking

Newcold Melbourne No.2 Pty Ltd enforceable undertaking