Artec Synergy Pty Ltd fined $7000 workplace safety breaches

Artec Synergy Pty Ltd pleaded guilty in the Launceston Magistrates Court to charges in relation to a fall from a ladder by one of its employees in November 2018 when installing a CCTV system.

Magistrate Simon Brown said that significant injuries occurred when the employee fell onto a concrete floor.

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"The employee who suffered the injury was the author of his own fate and will bear the brunt of the outcome," he said.

"The risk was a plain one which was not properly addressed.

"The use of a ladder should be something that should cause warning bells and the planning was agricultural at best.

"The company involved was a small privately held one, closer to a small partnership."

The Director of Public Prosecutions charged the company with failing to ensure a safe work method and minimise the risk of a person falling more than two metres.

The business also failed to provide a fall prevention device, failed to provide and select an industrial use ladder with non-slip feet, set up the ladder with a 4:1 slope, failed to secure the ladder at the top and bottom and failed to prepare a safe work method.

Mr Brown said the consequences for the company, which no longer traded, were disastrous.

"It was a lapse rather than a systematic failure and because it no longer trades there is little need for personal deterrence," he said.

The pleas related to a count of failure to ensure preparation of a safe work method statement and a count of failure to minimise the risk of a fall by providing adequate protection against the risk.

He said general deterrence must play a significant role. The maximum fine was $30,000.

"Parliament intends that OH&S is a critical area and a steady increase in fines is evidence of that," he said.