A company linked to the death of a man at a Canberra worksite has had another of its cranes temporarily shut down.
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Operator error forced Canberra's workplace safety watchdog to slap a prohibition notice on the RAR Group tower crane on a Phillip construction site on Monday.
Both the CFMEU and WorkSafe ACT said the crane operator dropped a pre-cast concrete panel weighing several tonnes at the Trilogy Apartments worksite in Phillip.
ACT work safety commissioner Greg Jones said the panel dropped less than half a metre while being supported by the crane.
"While no one was hurt in the incident, it had the potential to cause significant injury or death and WorkSafe ACT immediately attended the site," Mr Jones said.
Mr Jones said WorkSafe ACT placed the notice on the operation of the crane while the regulator carried out an investigation into the incident.
He said after the crane was tested for shock loading, improvements were made to its "operational structure" and it was back in use on Wednesday afternoon.
However both the crane company and the builder developer Milin Builders disputed that the panel had dropped.
RAR Group operations director Andrew Bodman said the concrete panel had been placed in position and workers were releasing the chains when the operator of the crane "inadvertently" lifted the load.
"It's not ideal what happened," Mr Bodman said.
Mr Bodman said the crane had been inspected by both his company and a specialist from Sydney before it returned to work.
A spokesman for Milin Builders confirmed the panel did not drop but said a lifting procedure was not followed.
"It lifted momentarily incorrectly," he said.
CFMEU ACT secretary Dean Hall drew a parallel between this incident and that which killed a construction worker on August 4.
It was an RAR Group mobile crane that rolled while moving a mobile generator, fatally injuring a 62-year-old construction worker.
Mr Hall said there seemed to be a "pattern" forming on ACT worksites.
"What we're seeing here is a series of worksite accidents, one resulting in a tragic fatality," Mr Hall said.
"The margin of error for injury or death on a construction site is not measured in metres or centimetres, it's measured in millimetres. They dropped a large panel of pre-cast concrete 3000 millimetres off the ground, that's the same distance the crane [at UC] was carrying the generator."
RAR Group operations director Andrew Bodman declined to comment on the construction worker's death pending the outcome of the WorkSafe ACT investigation.
Work safety commissioner Greg Jones refused to be drawn on how that investigation was progressing but said the watchdog would complete its blitz on cranes in a few weeks.
"This incident highlights the need for all work sites to focus on the safe operations of cranes including making sure that all communications are conducted in accordance with carefully designed procedures that are particular to each site," Mr Jones said.
Dean Hall from the CFMEU said the regulator "needed to come down hard" on companies that failed to comply with workplace safety procedures.
Mr Jones said: "While an educative approach to work safety is taken where possible, there may be situations where stronger action, including improvement or prohibition notices or even prosecutions, may need to be taken."
