John Parton was killed in April 2008 when a 200 metres by 100 metres steel frame fell on him at a South Park industrial estate building site in Dandenong.

The principal builder, Australand Industrial Constructions, was fined $350,000 over the incident in the Melbourne County Court last month.

While Australand had subcontracted the construction to Steelfield, which then subcontracted out to A&S Structural Welding without Australand's knowledge, "Australand did not even ask that Steelfield ensure someone was checking and ensuring stability", Judge Liz Gaynor said.

She said the site involved many workers and the potential for harm was high. She said the steel structure was insufficiently braced to resist high winds experienced that day. But Australand had introduced a number of steps since then to prevent such an incident reoccurring, and did all it could to support its staff and Mr Parton's family when he died.

"I do note that the site was shut for two weeks immediately after the incident and Australand provided counselling to all employees and some sub-contractors, and that Australand also arranged for a top-up on the minimum insurance that the deceased's employee company had taken out to ensure a maximum payout for the deceased's family," Judge Gaynor wrote in her reasons for sentence.

If Australand had not pleaded guilty, Judge Gaynor would have fined it $500,000.

Acting director of WorkSafe's construction and utilities team Allan Beacom said ensuring partially erected structures were stable was a simple step, but one that was often ignored.

"There are a surprisingly high number of structural failures where this simple step has not been done."