Three contract workers died and a fourth is in intensive care after a fall at the construction site of TSMC's Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP) Bureau suspects a broken bolt on a third-floor steel connection plate, which sent the workers and steel components tumbling. The bureau said they were hoisting and installing steel. Local police said they were welding a beam on an upper floor and fell with it. Ten emergency vehicles and 22 personnel responded, and three of the four men died despite resuscitation efforts.
Steel hoisting on the project is halted, and labor inspectors are investigating. The men worked for a contractor on Phase 4 of the complex, which began in August 2025 and is expected to start operating in the fourth quarter of 2027. TSMC said the area fell within the contractor's scope of work, and that it stopped related work on its own.
This is not an isolated event. According to local reports, at least six earlier accidents at TSMC construction sites in Taiwan since September 2024 each killed one worker. Three deaths at once is a new magnitude.
The backdrop is speed. TSMC went from building four fabs a year in 2017 through 2024 to nine a year in 2025 and 2026, and it plans 13 new leading-edge and advanced-packaging fabs in Taiwan on $60 billion to $64 billion of capex this year. Cliff Hou, a senior vice president, has said more workers and overlapping construction raise risk. The company now weighs a contractor's safety record in selection and plans a construction safety association with its partners.
TSMC also says its contractor lost-time injury rate fell about 42% from last year's high as of late May. That metric counts injuries that cost workdays, so it can improve while rare, catastrophic falls still happen. The cause here is unconfirmed, and it is too early to call the program a failure.
The industry is under strain elsewhere: an explosion killed two people at Intel's operating plant in Israel less than a week earlier. The STSP's findings will decide any penalties under Taiwan's Occupational Safety and Health Act. There is no restart date for steel hoisting, and TSMC has not said whether the Phase 4 schedule will move.