A Hamilton construction company has been fined $200,000 in connection with the death of a worker two and a half years ago.
Ontario’s Ministry of Labour says McNally Construction pleaded guilty in court on Thursday and agreed to pay the fine after a supervisor was fatally injured during a job site incident in Stoney Creek in June 2018.
Investigators determined that the worker was operating a mini-excavator in an underground pipe when it tipped over, trapping him between the machine and the inside of the pipe.
The Ministry says the machine should have been equipped with a “tip over protection system (TOPS)” but says it had been removed before it was lowered into the pipe.
“It is not known when the TOPS was removed or by whom,” the Ministry said in a release. “A TOPS protects a mini-excavator from tipping over and can protect an operator of a mini-excavator from overhead hazards.”
Emergency responders were called to Upper Centennial Parkway and Rymal Road East in Upper Stoney Creek, just before 2 p.m. on June 21, 2018.
The project involved the now-completed construction of an almost seven-kilometre long, $52-million sanitary sewer from Green Mountain Road to the area of Guyatt Road, to service residential growth on Hamilton’s south mountain.
It’s not the first workplace fatality involving the Barton Street company.
McNally Construction was also fined $170,000 after pleading guilty in 2013 to charges stemming from the death of a young worker, who was killed in an incident in Brampton two years earlier.
– with files from Ken Mann