Precision, Defence and Aerospace Welding risk assessment (NSW)
57 hazards and 451 controls for high-specification defence contractors, aerospace machining and cleanroom TIG, 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, 451 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 (30). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Precision and aerospace 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
Exotic alloys including titanium, Inconel and beryllium copper, trace contamination control, and micro-TIG and orbital work.
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.
Precision, Defence and Aerospace Welding
Workplace risk assessment for high-specification defence contractors, aerospace machining and cleanroom TIG in New South Wales: 18 activities, 57 hazards and 451 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
- ✓451 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, 451 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 precision and aerospace
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.
Every exposure in this workshop is determined by the alloy. Beryllium sensitises at very low exposure and causes irreversible lung disease; superalloys deliver nickel, cobalt and chromium together; titanium swarf burns in a way ordinary extinguishers will not control. Working on an unidentified alloy means none of the controls can be selected. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5C.
Ionising radiation exposure with no sensation at the time, causing tissue damage and increasing cancer risk. A degraded seal, a modified viewport or a defeated interlock can allow emission from a machine that appears to be working normally. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5B.
Titanium fires burn at a temperature that water, foam and carbon dioxide will not control, and water reacts with burning titanium. Fine dust in suspension is explosible. A bin fire inside the building becomes a building fire. 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.
Why the alloy decides every exposure in a precision welding cell
In a defence or aerospace cell the arc is small and the current is low, so it is tempting to assume the air is clean. It rarely is. Micro-TIG and orbital work on nickel and cobalt superalloys happens inside enclosed fixtures and purge chambers where the fume has nowhere to go, and superalloy fume delivers nickel, cobalt and chromium together, all of them carcinogens or sensitisers. Thoriated tungsten electrodes sharpened on a shared bench grinder add thorium-232 dust, an alpha emitter whose harm is internal once it is inhaled or swallowed.
The single hazard that carries the most liability is not a process at all: it is working on material nobody has identified. Titanium, nickel superalloys, beryllium copper and stainless look alike, and offcuts or customer-supplied stock arrive without certification. Beryllium sensitises at very low exposure and causes irreversible lung disease, so until the alloy is traced, none of the other controls can be chosen properly. Behind that sits general welding fume, classified IARC Group 1, with an exposure standard of 1 mg/m3 as an 8-hour average, and manganese, whose limit falls to 0.1 mg/m3 inhalable and 0.02 mg/m3 respirable from 1 December 2026.
What separates this trade from a general structural shop is the combination of toxic metallurgy with two unusual physical hazards. Titanium swarf and fines ignite from a spark or a hot tool and burn at a temperature that water, foam and carbon dioxide will not control. Electron beam welding produces X-rays wherever the beam strikes, and the chamber, its seals, interlocks and viewports are the only shield between the operator and ionising radiation.
What an inspector asks a high-specification welding shop to show
Expect the first questions to be about traceability and titanium. The assessment makes you confirm that every piece of stock is identified before it is cut or welded, that titanium is machined wet under flood coolant, that its swarf is kept in covered metal bins apart from every other metal and removed from the building daily, and that a dedicated wet collector serves titanium and nothing else. Class D media and dry sand must sit at each titanium work position, with water, foam and carbon dioxide excluded.
On the bandsaw, cut-off saw, pedestal drill, linisher and pedestal grinder, you check that emergency stops are marked, reachable and function-tested to AS/NZS 4024, and that work rests sit no more than 3 mm from the wheel with the tongue guard within 6 mm, per AS/NZS 1788. Slings, shackles and hooks need pre-use checks and periodic inspection records against AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741.
Beyond the plant, the assessment walks you through whether local exhaust at the arc has ever been tested, whether fume exposure has been quantified by air monitoring, and whether a health surveillance and symptom-reporting arrangement exists for the people doing this work.
What a first pass through an aerospace fabrication floor turns up
Most precision shops answer Yes to the housekeeping and PPE controls and No to the exposure-measurement ones. Welders wear good helmets and the cell looks spotless, yet nobody has sampled the breathing zone inside a purge enclosure, the extraction arm is parked away from the orbital head, and the thoriated electrodes are ground on the same wheel everyone uses.
The controls that move a hazard from yellow to green sit high in the hierarchy. For lifting, that means purpose-made lifting beams and plate clamps instead of improvised slinging, hooks with working latches, and handling designed so loads never travel over people. For cutting, a fixed saw used in place of a hand-held grinder for straight cuts.
Here is what NOT RATED looks like on your floor. Titanium fines are swept into the general swarf bin with steel chips, the bin is kept inside, and the only extinguisher nearby is water or carbon dioxide. Because separate collection and Class D media are unconditional gates, the titanium hazard cannot be scored at all until those answers change, however many other controls you tick Yes.
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.
- ✓High-specification defence contractors, aerospace machining and cleanroom TIG
- ✓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.