On 23 July 2024, a corporation pleaded guilty to a ‘Category 2’ offence contrary to s.32 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (‘the WHS Act’).

Magistrate Bevan Hughes imposed a fine of $60,000 plus costs of $1,500 and court costs of $101.40.

The defendant had a duty as a person conducting a business or undertaking, pursuant to s.19(1) of the WHS Act, to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers engaged, or caused to be engaged by it, while the workers were at work in the business or undertaking, that they failed to comply with that duty and the failure exposed an individual to the risk of death or serious injury or illness.

The defendant company manufactures and distributes timber products at 2 locations in Queensland including one located in the Mary Valley, west of Cooroy.

Part of the defendant’s business involves the planing of solid planks of softwood through plant known as a Ledinek Superplan (‘the planing machine’).This plant was manufactured in Slovenia and was already installed at the workplace when the business was purchased by the defendant in 2013.

Kiln dried timber planks are de-stacked on a machine known as a ‘tilt hoist’ and fed into the planing machine which planes all four sides of the plank to a pre-set width and depth.

The planing machine is located inside a room and controlled by a worker from an external control panel. There are three doors to the room which are interlocked and the moving parts of the planing machine which include rollers and rotating knives are further protected by an interlocked guard or ‘hood’ which can be raised to access the internal moving parts. The interlock arrangements on two of the doors, if opened, immediately shut down the entire planing machine. The interlock arrangements on these two doors are hard-wired and cannot be bypassed or overridden. Only one door enables access to the machine while it is running.

The machine is manufactured with a key operated switch at the control panel to disengage any connected interlocks (on the main access door and the machine hood) when it is necessary to access the internal parts of the machine. As installed, the keyed interlock did not cause the moving parts of the planing machine to stop.

Ideally the interlock to the hood would be disengaged only after other keyed switches are thrown to cut the power to immediately stop rotation of the cutting knives and to engage the brakes to rollers.

Typically access to the internal parts of the planing machine during normal operation would occur when timber jams in the rollers or cutting heads. In some instances, the jam can be relieved by jogging the affected timber with the hood down and the heads under power. With the hood raised, a type of crank handle is engaged to loosen the roller guides, so that the jammed timber can be removed manually by a worker.

The interlock on the hood guard operates to ensure that machine could not be restarted until the hood was in the locked position.

In 2019, a worker (worker 1) who was operating the planing machine reached into the machine while it was operating, with the cutting heads and rollers rotating at high speed, to remove a timber blockage in the cutting heads. His hand was dragged into the cutting heads by an adjacent dust extraction vacuum and became entangled. He sustained a severe laceration to his right index finger causing tendon damage.

No specific investigation was undertaken to ascertain how the interlocks had been circumvented to enable the worker to access the moving parts of the planing machine. Worker 1 accepted that he had placed himself at risk by failing to isolate energy to the planing machine, and for breaching the procedure that the heads must be completely stopped before opening the hood.

The electrical maintenance log for the planing machine records on 20 August 2020 that the key for the interlock override switch was replaced by a simple toggle switch until a keyed switch could be sourced.

By replacing the key switch with a simple toggle switch, the interlocks installed on the main access door and the machine hood (but not the interlocks on the other two doors which are hard-wired) could be deactivated by any person.  This effectively by-passed the engineering control of the interlocks and the administrative control of supervisors ensuring that the machine had come to a complete stop before disengaging the interlocks.

By doing so, the defendant failed to comply with its own work procedure.

In 2021, worker 1 was assigned to train another worker (worker 2) in the operation of the planing machine. He had partially trained worker 2 prior to his leaving employment in August 2021. Worker 1 states that while training worker 2, he did not discuss a sign which had been placed on the hood of the machine admonishing workers to de-energise the machine before ‘reaching in’. He continued the practice of opening the hood guard while the machine was still operating.

On 21 September 2021, worker 2 was rostered to operate the planing machine, although he had not yet been assessed as competent in its operation. He was assigned to supervise a new worker (the injured worker), who was rostered to work on the docker.

The docker is tasked with dealing with timber planks rejected by the tilt hoist and planing machine operator from being processed in the planing machine due to the presence of some defect or other issue with the plank. The docker is a relatively simple operation and is one of the first tasks to which new employees are allocated.

The docking operations are located adjacent to, but a floor below, the tilt hoist. They are also on a different floor to, and are separate from, the planing machine. There is no process flow of planks from the docker to the planer. To reach the planing machine room from the docking operations is a distance of approximately 30 metres and requires the docker to ascend a staircase to the level on which the planer is located.

At around 8:15am on 21 September 2021 a piece of timber splintered and became caught in the planing machine. The injured worker had accessed the staircase to the planing machine area, as it was approaching morning smoko and his bag was left in this area.  Worker 2 and the injured worker entered the room which housed the planing machine and worker 2 lifted the hood while the heads were still spinning. As worker 2 was pointing out where worker 1 had become entangled and was instructing the injured worker not to put his hands into the machine, the injured worker reached in to remove the timber. His right hand became drawn in and entangled in the top cutting heads.

He sustained severe lacerations to his right hand, fingers and thumb. He sustained traumatic amputation of his middle and ring fingers which were reattached through several surgical interventions. He will not regain full movement and feeling in his right hand.

A team leader was not present prior to lifting the hood.

The procedure whereby a team leader must be present prior to lifting the hood if the heads needed to be running to remove timber jammed in the machine was not always followed. Operators state that depending on the thickness of the board being run through the planer the planer may not jam up at all or only jam a few times during a shift, or the machine may jam up to 20 times per shift and supervisors may not attend after being called in any event.

After the incident the key switch was reinstalled on the control panel, however when the machine was inspected by an expert electrical engineer engaged by the Regulator, it was noted that the key could be removed from the interlock by-pass switch when in the disengaged position, which effectively negated the efficacy of the interlocks as an engineering control.

The defendant has since undertaken modifications to the planing machine to render the engineering controls effective to eliminate the risks of body parts contacting moving parts.

In sentencing the defendant, the magistrate firstly noted that the Work Health and Safety Act focuses on the health and safety of workers by the workplace eliminating or minimising risks.

In arriving at the sentence, he relied on case law and the principles found in higher court authorities. He found that the potential risk was one of serious injury to the hand or fingers, potentially resulting in permanent injury.

He found that there was a dichotomy in that this was not a one-off event, as it had previously occurred in 2019, although that incident had involved a plant operator, whereas the present incident had occurred to a worker who should not have been in the vicinity of the machine in the first place. However, he found that the defendant’s obligation extended to all workers in the workplace.

The systems of the defendant failed to adequately supervise the injured worker to ensure that he did not enter the area of risk.

The magistrate found that the probability of the risk manifesting was in the mid- range.

Foolproof measures were available to eliminate the risk, and there was no evidence available to suggest that those measures were in any way complex to implement.

The magistrate accepted that this was not a deliberate offence, but one of careless oversight with serious consequences.

He took into account the defendant’s early guilty plea, lack of previous offending, the expression of remorse evidenced by the steps it had taken to render the planing machine safe since the incident, and the assistance it had afforded to the injured worker after the incident.

He took into account that the defendant was a good corporate citizen.

OWHSP contact: enquiries@owhsp.qld.gov.au