LANE COVE, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA — Shoringco Pty Ltd has been fined A$170,000 after a traffic controller suffered serious injuries in a fall into an excavation at Lane Cove, Sydney. The NSW Industrial Court imposed two A$85,000 fines on 16 October 2026 following guilty pleas to workplace-safety offences.
The new development is the sentence, not a new accident. The incident occurred on 26 September 2022 during construction of an aged-care facility and commercial premises.
Mesh marked the edge but did not prevent a fall
According to the published court judgment, a blocked concrete line burst during pumping and the worker fell into the excavation. The precise mechanism of the fall remains unclear. Plastic mesh attached to star pickets did not stop her falling.
The company admitted failures involving adequate edge protection and separation of pedestrians from plant. One charge concerned its workers; the other covered other people exposed to the fall risk. The court also ordered payment of prosecution costs, to be agreed or assessed.
Contractor instructions did not resolve the protection gap
Independent specialist reporting by OnNotice describes how Shoringco installed the fencing to the head contractor’s specifications. The court treated those circumstances as mitigation but found that, as the excavation specialist, Shoringco should have recognised the inadequate protection.
The concrete pour was outside Shoringco’s contracted scope. The court acknowledged the difficulty of enforcing an exclusion zone around work it did not control, while identifying effective fencing as the primary missing safeguard.
OnNotice reports that the company subsequently installed a concrete barrier and higher fencing, appointed a WHS manager and changed its operating model. It now trades as SC Services NSW Pty Ltd. These later changes did not remove liability for the earlier offences.
HSE Blog analysis: check the barrier’s function
A visible boundary and a fall-prevention barrier serve different purposes. Site reviews should test whether an installed system can physically prevent a fall, not merely whether fencing appears on a method statement. Contractor interfaces also need explicit arrangements for changing activities near open edges. Our guide to excavation hazards and fall-prevention controls provides related background; local requirements remain authoritative.
Sources and imagery
The ruling was checked against the official judgment and one independent specialist outlet. In the Cove’s contemporary incident report provides additional historical context, not confirmation of the new sentence. Five independent reports of the ruling were not available.
The featured image is an HSEBlog editorial illustration, not an incident photograph or reconstruction. No actual-event image with verified permission for reuse here was identified.
Source
NSW Industrial Courtcaselaw.nsw.gov.au
