Boilermaking and Heavy Engineering risk assessment (NSW)
57 hazards and 452 controls for heavy engineering plants, crusher and chute fabricators and structural boiler shops, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
Tier 3 · Toxic metallurgy and confined work. 18 activities, 57 hazards, 452 controls.
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The 18 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (17 hazards), Process Safety (10) and Occupational Hygiene (30). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Boilermaking online calculator, tied to the email address used at checkout. Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your checklist, results and report.
✓A finished Word report (.docx) with every hazard, your answers, the residual risk and your Action Plan already in it — to print, sign and keep with your safety records.
✓The inherent hazard register in Word: every hazard here with what could go wrong, the possible consequence and its starting risk rating, to read before the walk and share with the people you consult.
✓A printable walkthrough checklist for marking by hand on the workshop floor.
What this pack is
Air arc gouging with noise above 115 decibels and heavy metal loading, thick plate preheat, and overhead crane handling.
Each industry here is a complete risk assessment for one kind of workshop, with the hazards and their starting ratings already identified by a Certified Industrial Hygienist. You answer Yes, No or N/A to the controls, and the calculator works out your residual risk, builds the Action Plan and produces the finished report.
Boilermaking and Heavy Engineering
Workplace risk assessment for heavy engineering plants, crusher and chute fabricators and structural boiler shops in New South Wales: 18 activities, 57 hazards and 452 controls across safety, process safety and occupational hygiene. Completed in the online calculator, which works out control scores, residual risk and a prioritised Action Plan and produces a finished Word report to print and sign.
- ✓57 hazards across 18 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated
- ✓452 controls listed for you, ranked by the hierarchy of control — you answer Yes, No or N/A
- ✓Colour-coded residual risk and a prioritised Action Plan, worked out for you
- ✓A finished Word report to print and sign
- ✓The inherent hazard register in Word and a printable walkthrough checklist for the workshop floor
Tier 3 · Toxic metallurgy and confined work. 18 activities, 57 hazards, 452 controls.
Secure checkout via Stripe. Sign in and start as soon as the payment goes through.
Run more than one kind of work? See every industry
The most serious hazards in boilermaking
A sample of the 57 hazards in this assessment, each shown with its consequence and the starting risk rating given by a Certified Industrial Hygienist before any controls are counted. The controls themselves are in the calculator.
The highest single-task fume and noise exposure in the workshop. A short gouging run can deliver more manganese than a full shift of welding, and at 110 dB(A) the daily noise limit is reached in under two minutes. Because it is rework, it is routinely left out of exposure assessments. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5C.
Asbestos exposure from lagging, gaskets and linings on older plant, with no safe level and licensed removal duties. Refractory ceramic fibre is a respiratory irritant and suspected carcinogen, and after firing also releases cristobalite, a form of respirable crystalline silica. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5B.
Burns from contact with surfaces that look cool, heat stress and collapse inside a space from which retrieval is difficult, and falling refractory. Entry into fired plant is confined space entry whether or not anyone calls it that. Safety · inherent risk 5B.
Zinc fume (metal fume fever), lead from old paint (a lead process with notification and biological monitoring duties), chromate primers containing Cr(VI), cadmium from plating, isocyanates from two-pack coatings. None of these are controlled by the arrangements in a bare mild steel workshop. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4C.
Crush injuries, multiple fractures, fatality. Vehicle and mobile plant incidents are consistently among the leading mechanisms of work-related fatality in Australia. Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Load dropped onto a person: crush injuries, multiple fractures, fatality. Sling angle is the most common miscalculation, because working load limit falls sharply as the included angle opens up. Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Rapidly developing workshop fire, burns, loss of premises and stock, business interruption. Process Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Workshop fire, flash fire, explosion of a closed vessel, severe burns, fatality, loss of premises and stock. Process Safety · inherent risk 4C.
How one hazard is rated
Hazard S1.1 — manual handling of sections, plate and offcuts — starts at 2D, rated before any controls are counted. The calculator lists 8 controls for it, from elimination and extraction at the source down to PPE, monitoring and emergency arrangements. You answer Yes, No or N/A for each on the floor. Once the last one is answered it works out the control score, applies any severity reduction earned by physical controls, and shows the residual risk as RED, YELLOW or GREEN. Every control you answered No to goes into your Action Plan, most urgent and most effective first, ready for a responsible person and a due date.
Gouging, thick plate and old fired plant
Heavy engineering shops generate fume in bursts that dwarf ordinary welding. Air arc gouging removes metal with a carbon electrode and a compressed air jet at high current, faster than any welding process, and it is usually unplanned rework done in the open shop without extraction. A short gouging run can deliver more manganese than a full shift of welding, and at 110 dB(A) the daily noise limit is reached in under two minutes. Because it is rework, it is routinely left out of exposure assessments.
Behind the gouging sits the steady load of welding on thick section. Welding fume is IARC Group 1, and the exposure standard for welding fumes not otherwise classified is 1 mg/m3 as an 8-hour time weighted average. Manganese is tighter still: from 1 December 2026 its limit drops tenfold for inhalable and fiftyfold for respirable, and a shop sitting at the total fume limit can already be over it.
The boiler shop part of the trade adds what a structural fabricator never meets. Boilers, furnaces and pipework arrive lagged, and on older plant the lagging, gaskets and linings may contain asbestos. Refractory ceramic fibre that has been fired releases cristobalite, a form of respirable crystalline silica. And the repair itself often means entering fired plant that has not fully cooled.
What an inspector looks at in a heavy engineering shop
With plate and fabrications this heavy, the assessment starts overhead. It asks for pre-use inspection of every sling, shackle and hook by the person using it, and periodic competent-person inspection with records to AS 3775 for chain slings, AS 4497 for webbing and round slings and AS 2741 for shackles. Untagged or damaged gear in use is a prohibited practice. On the fixed plant it checks emergency stops to AS/NZS 4024 and grinder work rests to AS/NZS 1788.
Entry into boilers and furnaces gets its own set of gates. The calculator asks for a documented cool-down period and a surface temperature check with a non-contact thermometer, forced ventilation before and during entry, a confined space entry permit with atmospheric testing and a standby person, isolation and lock-out of fuel, air, feedwater and electrical supplies verified by the entrant, and retrieval equipment sized for the access.
For fume it asks whether gouging is done under capture, whether extraction has been tested, and whether anyone knows what the lagging is before it is cut.
Where a heavy engineering shop usually lands first time
On a first pass, most heavy shops score well on cranes they use every day and poorly on the tasks that happen when a job goes wrong. Gouging is done wherever the defect is found, with the extraction arm left on the other side of the bay. Nobody has measured the noise from it. Lagging on a customer's boiler is stripped to reach the weld before anyone asks whether it is asbestos, and the confined space paperwork exists but the retrieval gear has never been rigged at a real access door.
The top-tier answers that turn yellow into green are the heavy handling ones: purpose-made lifting beams, plate clamps and magnet lifters instead of improvised slinging, hooks with working safety latches, softeners at every sheared edge, and loads delivered or built in place so they never travel over people. Physical barriers between forklift routes and walkways count for more than painted lines.
For NOT RATED, picture a crew going into a boiler the morning after shutdown because the client wants it back. If you answer No to the cool-down period and surface temperature check, the residual heat and confined entry hazard is not scored at all. The report prints NOT RATED, and that gate goes to the head of the Action Plan ahead of every fume and noise item.
How your controls are scored
Not generic advice — the specific, hierarchy-of-controls measures written into the pack, matched to how these assets actually fail.
Built for the people who do this work
If you operate, maintain or contract to these assets in NSW, this pack is written for your duties.
- ✓Heavy engineering plants, crusher and chute fabricators and structural boiler shops
- ✓Owners and managers who need a risk assessment that stands up to a SafeWork NSW visit
- ✓Safety coordinators covering several workshops or several trades
- ✓Workshops whose insurer, principal contractor or client has asked for a documented assessment
- ✓Trainers and supervisors inducting apprentices onto workshop hazards
Authored to the codes and the law
The Codes of Practice and Australian Standards these documents are measured against, and the legislation behind them.
- §Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW)
- §Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025 (NSW)
- §Workplace exposure standards for airborne contaminants (Safe Work Australia)
- §AS 1674.1 and AS 1674.2 — Safety in welding and allied processes
- §AS/NZS 1715 and AS/NZS 1716 — Selection, use and maintenance of respiratory protective equipment
Frequently asked questions
Add an in-house CIH risk assessment review
Complete your risk assessment using our digital engine, then have our in-house Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) and Full Member of the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists (MAIOH) review your specific results to ensure bulletproof compliance.
Post-completion expert review
Not sure if you categorised your site’s controls correctly? Complete your online assessment and send us the generated report. Our in-house experts will review your residual risk scores, validate your “N/A” selections, and ensure your action plan adequately addresses your highest liabilities (like hexavalent chromium or LEL environments) before you sign off.
- Scope
- Remote CIH and MAIOH review of your completed calculator report and hazard register.
- Turnaround
- 3–5 business days.
- Pricing
- Remote review is billed at an hourly rate of $250 AUD/hour (total quote based on the number of sections reviewed).
Walk it, answer it, sign it.
The calculator generates a finished, fully formatted .docx record with your Action Plan already inside it. Print it, sign it off, and you are audit-ready for this workshop.
Price in AUD, no GST charged · Jurisdiction: New South Wales — WHS Act 2011, WHS Regulation 2025 and SafeWork NSW Codes of Practice applied
This is a generic risk assessment for a typical workshop of this kind, to support your due diligence — completing it is not compliance in itself. You must answer it for your own site, consult your workers, put the missing controls in place, and get competent advice where it says so — exposure monitoring, for example, is work for an occupational hygienist. The limits are set out at the front of every report.