General Light Fabrication risk assessment (NSW)
54 hazards and 422 controls for general jobbing shops, light engineering and maintenance bays, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
Tier 1 · Standard fabrication. 18 activities, 54 hazards, 422 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 18 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (16 hazards), Process Safety (10) and Occupational Hygiene (28). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the General light fabrication 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
Mild steel welding fume as the baseline exposure, manganese neurotoxicity, grinding particulate and standard extraction capture.
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.
General Light Fabrication
Workplace risk assessment for general jobbing shops, light engineering and maintenance bays in New South Wales: 18 activities, 54 hazards and 422 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.
- ✓54 hazards across 18 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated
- ✓422 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 1 · Standard fabrication. 18 activities, 54 hazards, 422 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 general light fabrication
A sample of the 54 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.
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.
Welding fumes are classified IARC Group 1 (carcinogenic to humans, lung cancer, with limited evidence for kidney cancer). Also occupational asthma, chronic bronchitis and reduced lung function. The exposure standard for welding fumes (not otherwise classified) is 1 mg/m3 as an 8-hour time weighted average, and this figure carries through into the Workplace Exposure Limits that apply from 1 December 2026. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4C.
Chronic manganese exposure causes irreversible neurological injury: tremor, rigidity, impaired balance, cognitive and mood change, resembling parkinsonism. From 1 December 2026 the workplace exposure limit falls from 1 mg/m3 to 0.1 mg/m3 inhalable and 0.02 mg/m3 respirable, a tenfold and fiftyfold tightening. Manganese typically makes up several per cent of mild steel welding fume by mass, so a workshop sitting on the 1 mg/m3 total fume limit can already be at or above the manganese limits. Manganese is normally the first limit a mild steel workshop exceeds, and it is exceeded well before total fume becomes a problem. 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.
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.
Mild steel fume, manganese and the jobbing shop
A general jobbing shop runs MIG and stick on bare mild steel, cuts and grinds stock, and fixes whatever walks in the door. The baseline exposure is welding fume, classified IARC Group 1 for lung cancer, with an exposure standard of 1 mg/m3 as an 8-hour time weighted average that carries through into the Workplace Exposure Limits applying from 1 December 2026.
The liability that catches light fabricators out is manganese. It sits in the fume of essentially all mild steel arc welding, and from 1 December 2026 its limit falls from 1 mg/m3 to 0.1 mg/m3 inhalable and 0.02 mg/m3 respirable. A shop comfortable on total fume can already be over it. It is normally the first limit a mild steel workshop exceeds.
What separates a jobbing shop from a dedicated fabricator is the unpredictability of incoming work. Painted, primed, galvanised, plated or second-hand steel arrives and gets cut as if it were bare, bringing zinc, lead, chromate, cadmium or isocyanates into a workshop set up for none of them. Maintenance jobs also bring in drums that once held flammable contents.
Where an inspector starts in a light engineering bay
The assessment walks you through the fixed plant first: bandsaw, cut-off saw, pedestal drill, linisher and pedestal grinder. It asks whether each emergency stop is fitted, reachable and function-tested to AS/NZS 4024, and whether the work rest sits no more than 3 mm from the wheel with the tongue guard within 6 mm per AS/NZS 1788. A guard or interlock bypassed on a machine still in use is treated as a prohibited practice, not a low score.
Lifting gear gets the same treatment. You record pre-use checks on every sling, shackle and hook, and periodic competent-person inspection against AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741. Untagged or damaged gear in use stops that hazard from being rated. Test and tag of tools, RCDs and welding machines is a gate too.
Then comes extraction. The questions ask whether capture sits at the arc, whether the system has been tested since installation, whether filtered air is discharged back into the workshop, and whether exposure to welding fume and manganese has ever been measured. For hot work away from a fire-rated bay, the assessment looks for a written permit to AS 1674.1.
A typical first pass through a jobbing shop
Most jobbing shops pass the basics; the No answers cluster elsewhere. Air monitoring has never been done, so nobody can say whether manganese is under the new limit. The hood is parked away from the arc and the roller doors stay shut all winter. Incoming stock is not checked for coatings.
The controls that move a hazard from yellow to green are usually engineering ones. A fixed cut-off saw or bandsaw used in place of a hand-held angle grinder for straight cuts, bollards separating walkways from forklift routes, purpose-made plate clamps and lifting beams instead of improvised slinging, and on-torch or close-capture extraction that actually follows the welder.
Here is what NOT RATED looks like in this trade. A customer brings in a steel drum to have a bracket welded on. You ask what it held, get a shrug, give it a sniff and a rinse, and strike an arc. The facts treat welding or cutting a drum of unknown or previously flammable contents after visual inspection or airing out alone as prohibited. Until contents are established in writing and a competent person has gas-freed and certified the vessel, the calculator will not rate that hazard.
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.
- ✓General jobbing shops, light engineering and maintenance bays
- ✓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.