January 13, 2010

BRADLEY FEHR

Tracy Davis, who lost her father 29 years ago to the workplace tragedy at the Bentall Centre in Vancouver, placed flowers upon the permanent memorial in the park.

Occupational health and safety

Vancouver memorial timely after Toronto tragedy

RICHARD GILBERT

staff writer

The deaths of four construction workers in Toronto on Christmas Eve and a similar incident at the Bentall Centre in Vancouver in 1981 are the focal points of an effort to block proposed changes to safety legislation in B.C.

Before the Toronto fatalities, the Council of Construction Associations (COCA) in B.C. made a request to WorksafeBC to amend a section of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation that requires an employer or prime contractor to obtain the board’s permission before using a swing stage, boatswain’s chair or portable powered platform.

The move hasn’t sat well with the provincial trades council.

The British Columbia and Yukon Territory Building and Construction Trades Council (BCYTBCTC) wants to ensure that the legislation and its enforcement are not weakened.

“We are seriously concerned about the fall protection legislation and that there has been a call to review the legislation,” said Wayne Peppard, executive director of the BCYTBCTC. “This is the same legislation that was written as a result of the Bentall disaster and it was literally written in blood.”

Peppard said he believes some members of the construction industry have decided profits and the cost of doing business are more important than the lives of people who work for them.

However, the head of COCA said that isn’t the true.

“We are not into rhetoric and that is not at all the case,” said COCA president Grant McMillan.

“The people that make these statements don’t understand what we are trying to do.”

This issue isn’t straightforward.

“The handling of these requests is complex, and typically requires several exchanges between the applicant and WorkSafeBC before all the necessary information has been assembled by the applicant and received by WorkSafeBC,” said COCA in a document entitled, Work procedures in high risk situations.

Permission is only granted once the necessary information has been assembled by the applicant and received by WorkSafeBC.

The requirements are covered by CSA Standards and require the involvement of a professional engineer.

“When an employer wants to vary from the regulation, they must demonstrate what they are proposing is equal or better than what is in the regulation itself,” McMillan explained. “Requiring a variance is time consuming and may take several months. We need a process that is much more streamlined and effective than what is in place now.”

McMillan said COCA is seeking an amendment that eliminates the requirement for obtaining prior permission from the board.

“We are seeking a change that gives a professional engineer that authority if they have overseen the design and installation of the system,” he said. “An alternative would be a manufactured system, where an engineer somewhere else has vetted the system.”

According to McMillan, COCA is trying to provide a safe workplace with a minimum of unnecessary paperwork

“If a system is in place that doesn’t require a lot of back and forth it is better for everyone,” he said. “Our belief is you need a process that is simple, straight forward and focuses on what you need in terms of contractors and workers time. In no way whatsoever does this reduce safety.”

Peppard doesn’t agree. He said the current regulation was the result of an inquiry into the Bentall tragedy, by the Construction Industry Advisory Council (CIAC).

“And now on Christmas Eve in Toronto we saw yet another terrible example of what happens when safety is ignored – four more workers falling to their deaths,” he said. “None of those workers were tied to lifelines, as safety laws require – and the consequences were deadly.”

McMillan who was part of the CIAC investigation into the Bentall tragedy said all COCA wants is the regulations to be changed to allow the use of a wire rope instead of 2 x 4’s to safeguard workers from falling.

“The Bentall IV had nothing to do with wire rope guard rails,” he said.

“The incident was due to defective fly form design.”

The council helps organize an annual memorial event on January 7 each year to mark the deaths of four carpenters during construction of the Bentall Tower IV.

Gunther Couvreux, 49; Brian Stevenson, 21; Donald W. Davis, 34; and Yrjo Mitrunen plunged to their deaths from the 36th floor, when a fly form used for pouring concrete broke away.

“We are using the 1981 disaster as a memorial to all workers, who continue to die in the workplace,” Peppard said.

Thirty-three people died in B.C. in 2008 due to work-related causes. In the 29 years since the incident at the Bentall Centre, there have been 740 construction-related deaths due to trauma and industrial disease.

“If 740 people die in a plane crash or for whatever reason, the whole world would hear about it on the front page of newspapers or on TV,” said Peppard.

“Because people die in construction in threes and fours, we don’t hear about it.”

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