Walk, drive or cycle through Canberra and you won't get far without stumbling on a construction project somewhere as the capital remakes itself.
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The building industry is one of the city's economic powerhouses, but it's coming with a cost for the ACT.
Before international construction giant Multiplex Constructions and RAR Cranes were charged over the 2016 death of Herman Holtz on a Canberra work site, the ACT's work safety watchdog was an easy target for unions wanting stronger action from the regulator.
They had regularly kicked WorkSafe ACT, arguing it had been toothless since folding into Access Canberra, and pointing to statistics showing ACT workers were making more claims for injuries than employees interstate.
A Safe Work Australia report last year found while the ACT in in 2014-15 had the second-highest rate of serious work injury claims, its workplace inspectors made fewer visits to businesses and gave fewer notices to those ignoring employee safety.
Worse, in 2017, WorkSafe dropped a prosecution over a bridge collapse that hospitalised nine workers in 2010, due partly to the length of time it took on the investigation that would have inhibited prosecuting the matter successfully.
For the families involved, not to mention anyone who believes in safe workplaces, it was a deeply disappointing result, coming as it did after prosecutors were forced into an embarrassing backdown in 2016 dropping the charges against both defendants over the 2012 death of Ben Catanzariti at a construction site on the Kingston Foreshore.
WorkSafe ACT has been slapping employers with fewer infringement notices, which dropped from 13 in 2014-15 to zero the next year, while the number of prohibition notices received under work safety legislation nearly halved in that period to 65 and reached 58 in 2016.
Unions have been right to ask questions of the watchdog. Prior to its merger with Access Canberra, looking at the severity of recent workplace incidents, Canberrans might wonder how such things could be allowed to happen in the nation's capital.
The construction industry is already raising eyebrows in the ACT, attracting a government inquiry into building quality that says shoddy work could have cost the ACT more than $100 million last year.
A building bonanza might be lining pockets and adding to territory coffers but both construction companies and the ACT government can't let workers or building owners lose from the boom.
The government needs to set the standard for builders, who will take their cues from regulators. WorkSafe deserves the government's backing, in the form of resources and authority.
If WorkSafe is inside Access Canberra, its staff need the discretion and independence to decide when and how to regulate work sites, whether through education or enforcement. Should they fail to get these, harder questions will be asked should any more incidents occur.
Despite its recent failures, and without commenting on the guilt or otherwise of the companies charged, the watchdog has compiled a large case against Multiplex Constructions and RAR Cranes and might be said to be seeking redemption.
The volume of charges - nine in total - and the size of the investigation shows it is prepared, perhaps learning from past failures. The prosecution's brief of evidence was 30,000 pages long and included about 2000 photographs, video footage, and 3D computer modelling.
Whether Multiplex Constructions and RAR Cranes are penalised or not, WorkSafe may have delivered a retort to union jibes.
