Galvanised and Coated Metal Fabrication risk assessment (NSW)
59 hazards and 477 controls for fencing, gate, agricultural structure and pre-coated metal fabricators, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
Tier 2 · Heavy, mobile and process work. 18 activities, 59 hazards, 477 controls.
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The 18 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (16 hazards), Process Safety (10) and Occupational Hygiene (33). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Galvanised and coated metal 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
Acute zinc oxide fume and metal fume fever, primer thermal decomposition products, and chromate and lead paint off-gassing.
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.
Galvanised and Coated Metal Fabrication
Workplace risk assessment for fencing, gate, agricultural structure and pre-coated metal fabricators in New South Wales: 18 activities, 59 hazards and 477 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.
- ✓59 hazards across 18 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated
- ✓477 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 2 · Heavy, mobile and process work. 18 activities, 59 hazards, 477 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 galvanised and coated metal
A sample of the 59 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.
Every serious exposure in this workshop depends on what the coating contains. Zinc gives metal fume fever, old paint gives lead and the duties that come with lead process work, primers give hexavalent chromium, plating gives cadmium, and two-pack coatings give isocyanates. Without identification the business cannot select controls, cannot select respiratory protection, and cannot know which statutory duties have been triggered. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5C.
Lead damages the nervous system, kidneys and blood, and reduces fertility. It crosses the placenta. Where lead is present the work is lead process work under the WHS Regulation, which carries duties to notify SafeWork NSW, to provide blood lead monitoring, and to remove a worker from lead risk work at defined blood lead levels. Those duties apply whether or not the business knew the paint contained lead. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5C.
Hexavalent chromium causes lung and nasal cancer and is a sensitiser; from 1 December 2026 it has no exposure limit at all and the duty becomes elimination and minimisation. Cadmium causes acute chemical pneumonitis, which can be fatal from a single short exposure and presents hours later, and chronic kidney damage. The cadmium limit falls from 0.01 to 0.001 mg/m3 from 1 December 2026. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5B.
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.
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.
Zinc, lead paint and whatever else is on the steel
Fencing, gate, agricultural structure and pre-coated metal fabricators spend their day burning through something other than bare steel. Welding and thermal cutting of galvanised stock releases zinc oxide fume and brings on metal fume fever. Painted and primed steel adds the thermal decomposition products of the coating, and older paint systems add lead and chromate.
The health liability sits with what the coating contains. Lead from pre-1997 paint and red oxide primer makes the job lead process work under the WHS Regulation, with duties to notify SafeWork NSW, provide blood lead monitoring and remove workers at defined blood lead levels, whether or not you knew the paint was leaded. Chromate primers give hexavalent chromium, which has no exposure limit from 1 December 2026. Cadmium plating and cadmium-bearing silver brazing alloys can cause fatal chemical pneumonitis from one short exposure, and the cadmium limit falls from 0.01 to 0.001 mg/m3. Two-pack and powder coatings release isocyanates, a permanent respiratory sensitiser.
The 1 mg/m3 welding fume standard is reached quickly on coated steel and tells you little, because each coating constituent has its own limit. The trade also differs from a bare steel shop in one overlooked step: dry grinding or needle gunning the coating back from the joint often releases more lead, chromate and cadmium than the welding does.
Coating identification is the first thing asked for
The assessment starts where an inspector would: how does the workshop know what is on the steel before hot work begins? Customer-supplied, second-hand, demolition and farm material is the usual source of unknown coatings, and without identification you cannot choose controls, choose respiratory protection or know which statutory duties have been triggered.
From there the questions follow the coating. Where lead may be present, the assessment asks about notification and blood lead monitoring. Where chromates or cadmium are possible, it asks how exposure is being eliminated or minimised. It also checks whether chlorinated degreasing solvent is kept away from the arc, since ultraviolet converts residues to phosgene.
The plant and gear gates are the same as any fabrication floor: guarded fixed plant with emergency stops to AS/NZS 4024 and grinder rests set per AS/NZS 1788, lifting gear inspected against AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741, and a hot work permit to AS 1674.1 outside a fire-rated bay.
What a fencing and gate shop finds on its first run
Galvanised shops tend to know about metal fume fever and treat it as a rite of passage, so they have some extraction on the welding bench. What is usually missing is any system for identifying coatings on non-galvanised work. A farmer drops off an old cattle yard panel for repair, it is ground back and welded the same afternoon, and nobody asks what colour the original paint was.
The controls that move these hazards towards green are ordering and identification ones. Specifying uncoated stock for new work where the job allows, stripping coatings back by methods that do not generate dust, extracting the coating removal step as well as the weld, and a written receipt check that flags anything painted, plated or of unknown origin before it goes to the bench.
For this trade, NOT RATED usually shows up on the lifting gear rather than the coatings. Fencing panels and gate frames are moved with a chain sling that has lost its tag and has a stretched link, because it still seems to work. Using slings, shackles or hooks without tags, without a marked working load limit or with known damage is prohibited, and the dropped load hazard stays unrated until the gear is replaced or inspected.
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.
- ✓Fencing, gate, agricultural structure and pre-coated metal fabricators
- ✓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.