A CONSTRUCTION worker was lucky to escape serious injury after falling through scaffolding in Melbourne's inner south east this morning.

Shocked colleagues watched in horror as the 42-year-old, who had been carrying more than 40kg of scaffolding poles on his shoulders, fell through a makeshift platform to the ground below.

The workmen had been on a residential site on Northcote Rd, Armadale, when the accident happened just before 10am.

Emergency crews, including police, ambulance officers and SES volunteers, were called to the scene.

Work mate Garry Pearce, 16, described his shock as he watched his colleague fall.

"We were stripping the scaffolding and we've just been working away and then he's walking along and the next minute he's slipped through the boards and smacked his head on the ledger, and fell straight down to the ground with 40kg of stuff on his shoulder and really damaged himself pretty badly,’’ he said.

"We ran straight to him, got the boards off him to make sure he was okay.’’

The man was taken to The Alfred in a stable condition.  He suffered chest, head, shoulder and knee injuries.

It is the second reported scaffolding collapse in Melbourne this year.

In February, two construction workers survived a terrifying four-storey plunge as scaffolding collapsed into the street at a building site on Commercial Rd, Prahran.

Another man who jumped to safety as the six storeys of scaffolding began to crumble was left trapped and hanging upside down by his legs.

Work Safe officers were conducting a full investigation of the latest incident.

Source: The Herald Sun