Crane collapse latest problem for contractor

Same stretch of highway subject of previous dispute between firm, FDOT

A 47-year-old construction worker fell to his death on Monday when a crane tilted over on Interstate 95, with the bucket that carried him toppling to the ground. It may take investigators months to determine who, or what, was responsible.

Joseph Bienaime, 47, a Haitian immigrant who lived in West Palm Beach, had two young daughters, his family’s attorney, Marc Brumer, said. His wife has declined to speak with reporters.

Another construction worker who also fell is in stable condition, Florida Highway Patrol spokesperson Indiana Miranda said. His identity has not been released.

What is known about the accident is that the crane that failed to hold the two workers above the ground on Monday was being used in a highway improvement project that pitted Florida’s transportation department against the construction company it had contracted for the work.

The company, the de Moya Group, and the Florida Department of Transportation concluded a dispute over the same stretch of highway where a crane collapsed in February 2021, but that wasn’t the end of the company’s troubles.

A joint venture between the de Moya Group and another construction company became the subject of controversy twice in recent months for two deaths that occurred under its watch: Another crane accident that killed a construction worker in October 2021, and a hit-and-run crash on a construction site that killed a Pinellas County Sheriff ’s deputy in September.

Florida is still paying the company for work on multiple other projects, including another $400 million project in Broward.

Florida Highway Patrol will investigate the cause of Monday’s incident, which, in addition to hurting the workers themselves, endangered drivers and created traffic delays on many of central Broward’s roads for about half the day.

Meanwhile, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will investigate to determine if the construction company played a role in the incident. Those investigations

often take several months to complete.

Who is the de Moya Group?

The Florida Department of Transportation has paid the de Moya Group billions of dollars for roadway projects all over the state.

The Miami-based construction company, which declined to comment Monday, has served as FDOT’s lead contractor for a dozens of highway projects over the last 25 years, according to its website.

In April, OSHA found that a joint venture between the de Moya Group and a separate Atlanta-based company was responsible for a worker’s death in a crane-related accident in Clearwater in October 2021.

A 47-year old man was doing carpenter work on the construction site when a pile from a crane broke free, striking him in the chest and killing him. Officials proposed over $60,000 in penalties.

The investigation determined that the construction venture, Archer Western-De Moya Joint Venture, allowed workers “to remain within the danger zone while tension was applied to a crane’s load in direct contravention of the crane manufacturer’s procedures,” and failed to “train workers on how to recognize and avoid unsafe working conditions and train or qualify the signal person prior to directing crane operation.”

After an informal conference, the company agreed to fix the violations and pay $33,000. OSHA closed the case in August.

In September, a construction worker for the same joint venture killed a Pinellas County Sheriff ’s deputy in a hit-and-run crash with a front-end loader at a work site, the Tampa Bay Times reported. After the accident, it was revealed that the worker was undocumented, one of several undocumented migrants hired by the company, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said at a news conference.

The Florida Department of Transportation is currently paying that same joint venture for a $457 million dollar phase of the I-95 project from south of Hollywood Boulevard to south of Broward Boulevard. That phase is set to finish in spring 2025.

Ground conditions near project subject of dispute

In August 2016, the de Moya Group began work on a $153 million phase of the project from south of Broward Boulevard to north of Commercial Boulevard. That phase is set to finish next summer.

Bienaime was doing work for the project on Monday when the crane partially collapsed in a construction zone along the stretch of highway between the Sunrise and Broward boulevard exits.

That same stretch of highway was the subject of a dispute between the company and the Florida Department of Transportation in 2021, according to a report from the Florida Department of Transportation’s Dispute Review Board.

An argument between the de Moya Group and the FDOT over who was responsible for structural damage that shut down two southbound lanes of the highway between the Sunrise and Broward boulevard exits culminated in a dispute hearing in February 2021.

“Distress and damages” to the Sixth Street Bridge forced the department to close the southbound auxiliary lane between Sunrise Boulevard southbound on-ramp and Broward Boulevard southbound off-ramp in July 2020 to “insure public safety,” according to a report about the dispute hearing recommendation.

The Department of Transportation argued that the de Moya group caused the damage through construction activities and should pay the damages that the department incurred as a result of traffic delays.

“dMG entered into a contract to widen the existing bridge. Their actions damaged the bridge. DMG has a contractual duty to repair the bridge,” the state argued, according to the report.

The de Moya group disagreed.

“The Department has no evidence that dMG is in any way responsible for the structural defects to the existing bridge that resulted in the lane closure,” the group’s statement in the report reads.

Instead, the de Moya group accused the Department of Transportation of failing to act on “numerous inspection reports documenting damages to the existing structures” and “to perform required repairs” as well as “necessary forensic investigations as to the cause of such damages.”

The Dispute Review Board determined that the bridge damage was an “unforeseen catastrophic event,” the cause of which “has not been established and therefore is unknown.”

Whether the structural issues described in the dispute hearing report nearly two years ago had anything to do with the crane accident on Monday also remains unknown at this time. The Florida Department of Transportation did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

What caused the collapse?

In the moments before the bucket carrying Bienaime and his fellow worker plummeted 30 feet, the crane encountered what appeared to be “failing” ground and tilted over, according to experts who reviewed the incident.

The crane looked to be carrying steel frame, or leeds, that workers hammer into the ground. The hammering creates “a lot of vibration,” said Scott Orr, the owner of New Mexico-based Paradise Crane Consultants and a longtime investigator of crane accidents. He is not involved with the investigation of Monday’s accident.

The crane began to tip over, and it looked as if the leeds hit the basket that the workers were in, driving it onto the highway.

Cranes are “prone to settlement,” said Hesham Ali, a former professor of Geotechnical and Pavement Engineering at Florida International University. Settlement is when the ground moves downward when a load is applied to it. Construction companies can test the ground beforehand so that they know how much it can take.

The crane appeared to have punched into the “underlying support layers” of soil and asphalt, Ali said, suggesting the ground did not have the capacity to support it.

This kind of failure results “when a highly concentrated load is applied to a relatively soft soil support,” Ali said. “The soil will instantly settle, move, and heave around the load to cope with the excessive pressure. To prevent this failure, the load must be spread over a larger area, typically using support plates.” Cranes come with a “load chart,” which tells operators the amount of pounds per square inch the ground has to support based on what the crane is lifting, Orr said.

Often the ground won’t support what needs to be lifted, so companies bring in tools like support plates.

In a case where a subcontractor operates the crane for the construction company, the operator has the responsibility to tell the company about the issue, and the company has to provide what is needed to rectify it.

It is unclear whether the de Moya Group had hired a separate company to operate the crane on Monday. Often, with highway work, the company provides its own crane, Orr said.

If investigators confirm that the crane tilted as a result of failed ground, then the question becomes who, or what, was responsible for assessing the ground.

Someone was responsible, Orr said, but he couldn’t say who.

“Looks like there was a hitch in the get-along,” he said. “Somebody didn’t do something right.”