Mining and Heavy Equipment Repair risk assessment (NSW)
56 hazards and 438 controls for earthmoving repair centres, heavy plant workshops and bucket repair bays, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
Tier 3 · Toxic metallurgy and confined work. 19 activities, 56 hazards, 438 controls.
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The 19 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (17 hazards), Process Safety (11) and Occupational Hygiene (28). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Mining and heavy equipment 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
Hardfacing alloys carrying cobalt, chromium, nickel and high manganese, heavy gouging fume and noise, and access inside machinery.
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.
Mining and Heavy Equipment Repair
Workplace risk assessment for earthmoving repair centres, heavy plant workshops and bucket repair bays in New South Wales: 19 activities, 56 hazards and 438 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.
- ✓56 hazards across 19 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated
- ✓438 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. 19 activities, 56 hazards, 438 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 mining and heavy equipment
A sample of the 56 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.
Manganese neurotoxicity, which is irreversible; hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen with no exposure limit from 1 December 2026; nickel, a carcinogen and sensitiser; and cobalt, which causes occupational asthma and hard metal lung disease. A hardfacing run delivers several of these simultaneously at concentrations far above ordinary welding. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5C.
Uncontrolled release of stored hydraulic or gravitational energy causing crush injury and fatality; fire and explosion from fuel and oil in the heat of the arc; and exposure to whatever the plant was processing, which may include respirable crystalline silica in dried mud and fines. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5B.
Tyre explosion and rim separation release energy comparable to a substantial explosive charge, killing people tens of metres away and hours after the work that caused it. This is a recognised cause of death in mining maintenance. Process Safety · inherent risk 5B.
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.
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.
Hardfacing, gouging and dirty plant: the heavy equipment repair exposure story
A heavy plant repair bay spends its day removing worn metal and putting harder metal back. Gouging, cutting and grinding strip out cracked and worn sections, then structural repair welding and hardfacing rebuild buckets, teeth and wear surfaces. Hardfacing alloys carry manganese, chromium, nickel and cobalt, and a single hardfacing run delivers several of them at once, at concentrations far above ordinary welding. Manganese damages the nervous system irreversibly, hexavalent chromium is a carcinogen with no exposure limit from 1 December 2026, nickel is a carcinogen and sensitiser, and cobalt causes occupational asthma and hard metal lung disease.
Underneath that sits ordinary welding fume, classified IARC Group 1, with an exposure standard of 1 mg/m3 as an 8-hour time weighted average that carries through into the Workplace Exposure Limits from 1 December 2026. Gouging adds heavy fume and noise on top.
What sets this trade apart from general fabrication is what arrives on the truck. Plant comes in with stored hydraulic and gravitational energy, fuel and oil that ignite in the heat of the arc, and dried mud and fines that may contain respirable crystalline silica. Earthmover tyres and wheel assemblies can release energy comparable to a substantial explosive charge, and high pressure hydraulic fluid can inject through skin in a wound too small to see.
What an inspector asks about in a heavy plant workshop
The assessment makes you check de-energisation before anything else. It asks whether hydraulic systems are depressurised and verified at a gauge with accumulators discharged before any hose or fitting is touched, whether leaks are found with cardboard held at a distance rather than by hand, whether a written emergency procedure and card explain that an injection injury needs immediate surgical assessment, and whether workers know the wound will look trivial. Locating a leak by hand or cracking a line without verifying pressure is a prohibited practice.
Lifting is the next focus in a bay that handles buckets, booms and heavy components. Slings, shackles and hooks are checked for tags, working load limits and periodic inspection to AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741. Fixed plant is checked for emergency stops to AS/NZS 4024 and grinder work rest gaps to AS/NZS 1788.
On hygiene, you are asked whether local exhaust reaches the hardfacing and gouging stations, whether it has been tested, whether filtered air is returned to the workshop, and whether exposure to fume and its metals has ever been measured.
What a heavy equipment workshop usually finds on the first pass
Repair centres used to mine-site systems often answer Yes to isolation, lifting gear registers and tag-out. The No answers usually appear in the hygiene section: no extraction at the gouging station because the component is too large to bring to a hood, no air monitoring for hardfacing metals, and no check on whether dried mud on incoming plant contains silica. Settled dust on beams and plant is common and rarely cleaned by a method that avoids re-suspending it.
Top-tier controls that shift hazards from yellow to green here include purpose-made lifting beams and plate clamps in place of improvised slinging, work designed so loads are not lifted over people, physical separation of pedestrian walkways from forklift and crane routes, and a fixed saw in place of a hand-held grinder for straight cuts. These carry more weight in the score than procedures alone.
A NOT RATED result looks like this. A fitter finds a weeping hose on an excavator boom and runs a gloved hand along it to find the leak, with the system still under pressure. That answer triggers the prohibited practice for high pressure hydraulic fluid, and the hazard is withheld from scoring until the practice stops.
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.
- ✓Earthmoving repair centres, heavy plant workshops and bucket repair 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.