Peter Gray Engineering sentenced after worker fatally crushed at Ōtorohanga site

A young worker was crushed to death by an almost two-tonne industrial machine as he and his colleagues used a risky, ad-hoc method to move it into a workshop.  Last month, Peter Gray Engineering Limited was sentenced in Te Kūiti District Court following the death of a 31-year-old employee on December 1, 2023.  WorkSafe prosecuted the company on a charge of “failing to comply with the duty to ensure the health and safety of workers while at work in the business undertaking”.  Judge Gordon Matenga’s recently published sentencing notes said the business carried out engineering and fabrication work for the dairy sector from its Maihihi Rd base in Ōtorohanga.  According to the court document, the victim’s family was at the hearing and gave victim impact statements, which were suppressed.  Peter Douglas Gray, the principal of Peter Gray Engineering, was also there. NZME understands he has since sold the business, which was operating as Dairy Tech Limited at the time of the incident.  Judge Matenga thanked those affected by the workplace incident for attending.  “It is not an easy thing to do and I hope that they will be able to move forward after this,” he said.  The court heard that on the day of victim’s death, he and other workers tried to move a 1.84-tonne press brake into the workshop.  The machine had been unloaded from a delivery truck using a forklift that morning, but the forklift could not fit through the workshop entrance while also lifting the press brake.  Employees instead tried to move it using two skates, a stacker and later a farm jack.  Workers lowered the press brake onto the stacker and skates and tried to pull it into the workshop.  The press brake that fatally crushed a young worker at Peter Gray Engineering. Photo / Supplied  But as the press brake was being moved, the right-hand skate became displaced after the stacker’s wheel passed over a crack in the workshop floor.  The victim got a farm jack and tried to lift the press brake to reposition the dislodged skate.  While using the jack, his efforts caused the machine to rock and shift the skate.  When he tried another full stroke of the jack’s ratchet mechanism, the press brake rocked backwards and then forwards.  This movement pushed the right skate out from beneath the machine, and the press brake slid off the stackers’ forks, fell towards the victim and trapped his torso and legs beneath it.  He died at the scene due to crush injuries to his chest and abdomen.  ‘A lack of appreciation of the risk’  WorkSafe’s investigation found that the company had not undertaken an effective risk assessment for transporting the press brake, had not ascertained its actual weight and had not identified safe alternative means of moving it.  Judge Matenga’s notes stated that the stacker used was rated to one tonne, well below the weight of the press brake, and the skates were unstable and unsecured.  “The methodology used exposed workers to a readily foreseeable risk of death or serious injury,” he said.  “WorkSafe’s expert concluded that safer methods of moving the press brake were available, including using the forklift inside the workshop once the area was cleared.”  The expert further noted that the skates were poorly positioned, the farm jack was not used properly and the workers placed themselves in dangerous positions throughout the operation, the judge said.  In sentencing the company, Judge Matenga said it previously had a good record and an established safety framework.  The workshop, where the press brake was being moved into. Photo / Supplied  “The real problem here was that proper and careful thought was not given by the defendant to the task at hand,” he said.  “There was no real appreciation at all of the weight of the press brake or the challenges and risk moving it into position into the workshop would present.”...

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