Foundry and Casting Repair Welding risk assessment (NSW)
58 hazards and 461 controls for metal casting facilities, pattern workshops and heavy repair foundries, 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, 58 hazards, 461 controls.
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The 18 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (16 hazards), Process Safety (11) and Occupational Hygiene (31). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Foundry and casting repair 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
Extreme radiant heat from preheat, respirable crystalline silica from moulding sand, and toxic constituents of casting alloys.
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.
Foundry and Casting Repair Welding
Workplace risk assessment for metal casting facilities, pattern workshops and heavy repair foundries in New South Wales: 18 activities, 58 hazards and 461 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.
- ✓58 hazards across 18 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated
- ✓461 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, 58 hazards, 461 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 foundry and casting repair
A sample of the 58 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.
Silicosis, progressive and irreversible, including accelerated silicosis from high exposures over a few years; lung cancer; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; autoimmune disease. Respirable crystalline silica is a Schedule 14 substance requiring health monitoring where there is a significant risk of exposure. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5C.
Lead damages the nervous system, kidneys and blood, and where present the work is lead process work with notification and blood lead monitoring. Beryllium causes chronic beryllium disease, an irreversible lung disease which can follow very low exposures in a sensitised person. Neither is visible in the casting. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5B.
Water trapped under molten metal flashes to steam and expands violently, ejecting molten metal across the plant. Steam explosions in foundries kill and disfigure people standing well clear of the pour, and there is no protective clothing that survives a direct hit. Process 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.
Entanglement and degloving, amputation of fingers and hands, severe lacerations; a workpiece drawn into the gap between wheel and work rest can shatter the wheel and eject fragments at lethal speed. Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Rapidly developing workshop fire, burns, loss of premises and stock, business interruption. 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.
Sand, radiant heat and alloy fume: the foundry repair exposure story
Casting repair welding happens in a plant already full of respirable crystalline silica. Knockout, casting cleaning, sand handling and fettling put silica from moulding sand into the air before a welder picks up a torch. Silica causes silicosis, progressive and irreversible, including accelerated silicosis after a few years of high exposure, as well as lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and autoimmune disease. It is a Schedule 14 substance requiring health monitoring where there is a significant risk of exposure.
The weld repair adds the alloy. Lead in a casting makes the work lead process work with notification and blood lead monitoring; beryllium causes chronic beryllium disease, which can follow very low exposures in a sensitised person. Neither is visible in the casting. Welding fume itself is classified IARC Group 1, with an exposure standard of 1 mg/m3 as an 8-hour time weighted average, and manganese limits fall to 0.1 mg/m3 inhalable and 0.02 mg/m3 respirable from 1 December 2026. Refractory repair adds ceramic fibre, a suspected carcinogen that releases cristobalite after firing; stripping a used lining is the highest exposure task in the plant.
What separates a foundry from a fabrication shop is heat and molten metal. Preheat brings extreme radiant heat, and water trapped under molten metal flashes to steam and ejects metal across the plant, injuring people well clear of the pour.
What an inspector looks at first in a foundry repair shop
The assessment makes you check silica control at knockout, sand handling and fettling before anything else: extraction at the source, cleaning methods that do not re-suspend dust, and whether health monitoring is in place for workers with significant exposure. It then asks about casting alloys, including whether lead or beryllium content is known before repair welding starts.
Hot work outside a designated fire-rated bay is checked for a written permit to AS 1674.1, and shielding gas connections for scheduled leak testing. Any drum, tank or pipework brought in for repair must have its previous contents confirmed in writing and be cleaned and gas-freed with a certificate before hot work; welding a vessel of unknown or flammable contents after airing it out is a prohibited practice.
Fixed plant is checked for emergency stops to AS/NZS 4024 and fettling grinder work rests to AS/NZS 1788, lifting gear for heavy castings against AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741, and welding and portable electrical equipment for current test tags.
What a foundry usually finds on the first walkthrough
Foundries often answer Yes to heat PPE and molten metal procedures, because those risks are obvious on the floor. The No answers tend to sit with the invisible hazards: no analysis of casting alloys before weld repair, no health monitoring for silica despite years of sand handling, extraction at the fettling bench that has never been tested, and refractory lining stripped as a rushed shutdown job without controls for ceramic fibre and cristobalite.
The top-tier controls that move hazards from yellow to green here include purpose-made lifting beams and plate clamps rated for the castings handled, loads moved without lifting over people, physical separation of walkways from forklift and crane routes, and a fixed saw in place of hand grinding for straight cuts. Each of these outweighs a procedure in the score.
NOT RATED looks like this in a foundry. The pedestal grinder used for fettling has a work rest that has drifted well past 3 mm as the wheel wore, and the tongue guard sits wide open. Because that gate is unconditional under AS/NZS 1788, the calculator withholds the score for the fixed plant hazard until the rest and guard are reset.
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.
- ✓Metal casting facilities, pattern workshops and heavy repair foundries
- ✓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.