Concrete company fined $40,000

The concrete company that is laying the floor for the Tauranga Indoor Sports & Exhibition Centre has been fined $40,000 and ordered to make reparations of $15,000 after a worker was catapulted more than 2m in the air, breaking both wrists and two ribs.
Conslab Limited pleaded guilty to one charge under the Health and Safety Act and was sentenced in Auckland District Court on Thursday.
The court was told that in June last year the company had been contracted to build a masonry block retaining wall at a business in Penrose, Auckland.
A Conslab employee was unloading two-tonne masonry blocks from the back of a truck using a small digger as a forklift.
The driver, a Conslab employee, asked the other worker to get on the back of the digger to counter the weight of the block, but when the driver lowered the block quickly to the ground the other worker was flung about 2.5m in the air. He landed on the digger roof, then fell to the ground, breaking both wrists and two ribs.
The digger was not supposed to lift more than 815kg but was being used to try and move blocks of up to two tonnes, Labour Department acting northern regional manger Claire Morris said.
"This is completely unacceptable and it should never have been used for this job," she said.
Ms Morris said the company should have trained the driver to use the machine as a forklift but ultimately should have provided a more suitable machine to unload the blocks. "This employee was extremely lucky to survive this accident but his injuries could have been avoided if Conslab had made sure their employees knew the operating capacity of the bobcat [digger]," she said.
Conslab director Andrew Dallas, who lives in Tauranga, said the company "sincerely regretted" the accident and said there was no doubt it took health and safety seriously.
Mr Dallas said the digger driver remained a Conslab employee.
"He didn't lose his job, he's a young guy and we believe he certainly learnt all the lessons he needed to from that accident."
Mr Dallas said the driver had been operating the machine for years, and a job safety analysis had been carried out at the site prior to the truck being unloaded. The area around the digger had also been coned off. "It [the job safety analysis] ensures that we have covered all possible risks. When we did our job safety analysis we haven't considered that one unfortunately."
Ms Morris said the accident was a reminder to employers to consider which machinery and equipment was suitable for certain jobs, taking into account manufacturers' instructions and operating weights.
The company was fined under Section 15 of the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, which states that every employer shall take all practicable steps to ensure no action or inaction of any employee while at work harms any other person.