Staff and executives at Vancouver’s Ledcor Group of Companies were rattled when two subcontracted workers died December 2 in separate workplace accidents mere minutes and a few blocks apart.
The incident provided human resources lessons about how to handle the tragedy. It also invoked memories among many in the industry about a catastrophy 30 years ago that prompted tremendous change in the construction industry.
WorkSafeBC continues to investigate the cause of the December 2 incidents.
Ledcor made a point of acting quickly. It immediately closed both work sites – Canada Place and Three Harbour Green – for several days. The company also closed all 35 of its job sites across the province for one day so management could gather at the Vancouver Convention Centre for a safety meeting and hear directly from the CEO about how to avoid workplace accidents and the importance of safety.
“To have something like this happen at Ledcor is hard to explain,” said the company’s vice-president of communications and public affairs, Lee Coonfer.
That’s because, Coonfer said, Ledcor does not simply rely on WorkSafeBC inspectors to assess its job sites and ensure safety.
It also has employees whose sole job is to ensure safety on all of the company’s job sites. Those staff members work under a senior vice-president of health and safety.
Countless staff at Ledcor, and its subcontractors, accessed grief consultants that Ledcor contracts on an ongoing basis to help employees through everything from divorce complications to severe health diagnoses.
The deaths also affected Ledcor owners in a personal way.
Ledcor chair Dave Lede and his brother Cliff Lede, who remains a director at the company, were both present in 1980 when their father, founder Bill Lede, died in an industrial accident, Coonfer told Business in Vancouver.
Not long after the senior Lede’s death, there was a pivotal incident that changed the construction industry in B.C. forever.
Gunther Couvreux, Donald Davis, Yrjo Mitrunen and Brian Stevenson all fell 36 storeys while constructing the Bentall Four tower in downtown Vancouver.
The incident prompted a coroner’s inquest that helped create the Construction Industry Advisory Council (CIAC), said retired United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Local 452 vice-president Colin Snell, who was a juror in the inquest.
“We didn’t get the CIAC from the minister of labour because we said, ‘Please,’” Snell said. “It was because we put heat on the minister of labour of the day. He had to deliver because there was heat, not just coming from the unions – the employers knew that there was something wrong.”
The CIAC produced a 200-page report that made pivotal recommendations, including that:
- 35% of BC Workers’ Compensation Board (now WorkSafeBC) inspectors have a background in construction;
- inspectors visit rural sites and all construction sites once a month; and
- that inspections be carried out on all shifts, day or night.
Al Johnson, who is a WorkSafeBC regional director for the Lower Mainland/North, said the entire construction industry is still grieving and in shock about what happened on December 2.
“We still feel the pain. It’s raw with everyone now,” he said “It’s raw with all of us at WorksafeBC doing the investigation, those in the organizations that those workers were with and certainly the family and friends of those particular workers.”
Johnson told Business in Vancouver that WorkSafeBC safety inspectors follow that recommendation and conduct safety assessments whenever construction workers are on the job.
For example, WorksafeBC inspectors recently inspected construction of the Port Mann Bridge on a 6 p.m.-to-midnight shift, he said.
“We have a team of 18 officers dedicated to the Lower Mainland that do nothing but residential construction inspections. They work on shifts six days a week and they inspect on all the hours that are used in residential construction – that means longer days in the summer and shorter ones in the winter.”
So far, the December 2 accidents have prompted no changes to WorkSafeBC policy, Johnson said.
“It is obviously a double tragedy for that employer given that the deaths happened so quickly together but it’s still under active investigation so I can’t comment,” he said.
WorkSafeBC statistics show that 31 people died in the construction industry in 2010. Five were motor vehicle accidents, 18 were due to occupational disease and eight were from traumatic injuries or accidents.