Tensioning bar, jack struck worker, causing serious injury
The company constructing the Valley Line West LRT in Edmonton, Alberta is now facing 14 charges after a worker was injured on the job two years ago.
Marigold Infrastructure Partners is facing 14 counts under the province’s Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act and OHS Code for the incident that occurred on June 23, 2023, according to a CBC report.
On the day of the incident, workers were completing temporary post-tensioning of a segment of the Valley Line West project.
When one of the jacks was pressurised, the concrete crumbled, and a tensioning bar along with the jack struck the worker, causing serious injury.
“The charges include failure to ensure workers were adequately trained in all matters necessary to perform their work in a healthy and safe manner; failure to ensure the health and safety of a worker; and failure to ensure a hazard assessment was repeated when a new work process was introduced,” according to the CBC report.
Marigold Infrastructure Partners was selected to construct the 14-kilometre LRT extension project in 2020.
It is expected to be completed by 2028.
Valley Line Southeast
Previously, a report noted that worker injuries at Edmonton's $1.8-billion Valley Line Southeast had been occurring at a rate significantly higher than both industry and provincial averages.
The rate of disabling injuries for employees at TransEd – the company responsible for building the Southeast line – was far worse than comparable benchmarks.
In 2020, for example, the company recorded 59 disabling injuries, according to data from the Alberta government. That equates to more than one injury per week. The company also had a disabling injury rate of 12.49 that year – about five times higher than the 2.23 industry average and 2.61 provincial average.
“You could say we only have insights into a portion of the work,” said Christopher Coles, director of the Lynch School of Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta, in a previous CBC report.
"In terms of disabling injuries, you can't take away from the fact that more than a person a week was hurt in 2020, 41 people were hurt in 2019."
