CASE STUDY: TRENCHWORX (PTY) LTD, TRENCHING AND EARTHMOVING CONTRACTOR ON CONSTRUCTION PROJECT FOR CLIENT, A SICILIAN HOTEL GROUP Trenchworx (Pty) Ltd is currently the primary contractor on the project for one of its clients, a Sicilian Hotel Group. The project entails building a hotel on what was vacant land in the Midrand area of Johannesburg. The company have 270 employees of which 20 of them are admin staff situated at their head office. The project scope is to build a five-storey hotel, an adjacent parking area for the hotel guests and visitors, a large swimming pool, tennis courts, landscaping and paving for the site. The first activity on site is trenching and earth moving, in order to clear the site for preparation. This involve using two diesel excavators and one bobcat excavator, to remove the soil and vegetation from the area in which the trenches for the hotel, parking area and paved areas will be needed. Shovels and spades are also used to remove remaining vegetation and excess soil. The excavations are secured by means of bracing which entails wooden boards and steel frames inserted into the excavation to ensure that it does not collapse and injure the workers. The soil then gets transported to the soil area by using a tipper truck. Some of the soil will get used later for backfilling where required. The trenches that are created is the first step of creating foundation walls for the buildings on the site. PROCESS MAPPING: INPUTS Diesel Excavators Bobcat Excavator Tipper Truck Shovels and Spades Diesel Measuring Equipment Ladder Wooden Boards Steel Bracing ACTIVITY OUTPUTS Dust Diesel Fumes Diesel Spillages Trenching and Earth Moving Oil Spillages Excavator Noise Vibration Crushed Rocks and Soil Hazardous Waste Excess Soil Heaps RECENT INCIDENT HISTORY: One of the manual labourers named Pete entered one of the excavators while it was busy removing soil from the edges of the excavation. The excavation was not secured by the bracing as yet and it had rained the previous day. When the excavator reached the side edge of the excavation it tumbled into the excavation resulting in the excavation to collapse and fatally injured the worker. The driver of the excavator came out of the incident unscarred. A group of scholars accessed the construction site in the afternoon to practice their skateboarding skills on the soil heaps and used the wooden boards as ramps. When one of the scholars ramped over the wooden board, he fell right into a 5-metre-deep excavation. The scholar broke his arm and suffered severe neck trauma. Rescue operations were carried out immediately and the incident site was barricaded. It was found that the scholars accessed the site through a hole in the parameter fence of the construction site. This was also written in the incident report.