Four companies face safety charges from 2022 Bedford incident
Four companies face a total of 26 charges under the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act in connection with a March 2022 incident at a Bedford construction site that sent a worker to hospital.
An investigator with the Labour Department laid the charges this month, and the companies were arraigned Tuesday in Halifax provincial court.
Crown attorney Alex Keaveny said the mishap occurred March 10, 2022, at a project on Tilbury Avenue when a flytable – a mould used in the pouring of concrete floor slabs – crashed to the ground from a height of two storeys.
Keaveny said the flytable allegedly had not been properly secured and let go when a worker leaned against a guardrail. He said the mould landed on top of the worker, who was seriously injured in the fall.
The worker’s employer, Mico Tile and Concrete Ltd. of Halifax, is charged with four OHSA offences: failing to ensure fall protection was used where required, failing to ensure a person was trained in fall protection, and failing to implement and comply with its hazard assessment and inspection policy.
Arnoldin Form Works Ltd. of Goodwood faces six charges: failing to properly assemble truss panels, failing to adequately brace truss panels, failing to implement or comply with a written safety policy, and failing to implement or comply with its flytable plan.
The other two companies charged – Cresco Project Management Ltd. and Tilbury Apartments Ltd. Partnership, both of Bedford – are affiliated with each other. Both companies face four counts of failing to implement or comply with orientation requirements in relation to Mico and two counts of failing to implement or comply with safe work practices for guardrails and protective coverings.
Cresco is also charged with four counts of failing to take every reasonable precaution to ensure a safe workplace.
A lawyer from the Dartmouth firm BoyneClarke appeared in court Tuesday on behalf of Mico, Cresco and Tilbury, but nobody showed up for Arnoldin.
Judge Gregory Lenehan scheduled the case to return to court Feb. 27.
