Pressure Vessel and Tank Manufacturing risk assessment (NSW)
57 hazards and 453 controls for boiler shops, storage tank builders and autoclave manufacturers, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
Tier 3 · Toxic metallurgy and confined work. 20 activities, 57 hazards, 453 controls.
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The 20 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (17 hazards), Process Safety (12) and Occupational Hygiene (28). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Pressure vessel and tank 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
Welding inside vessels as confined space work, purge and shielding gas pooling, preheat thermal stress and weld root gouging.
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.
Pressure Vessel and Tank Manufacturing
Workplace risk assessment for boiler shops, storage tank builders and autoclave manufacturers in New South Wales: 20 activities, 57 hazards and 453 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 20 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated
- ✓453 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. 20 activities, 57 hazards, 453 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 pressure vessel and tank
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.
Crush and amputation of fingers, hands and arms; a shell that rolls or springs can crush a person against plant or the wall. Rolling machines draw material in faster than a person can let go. Safety · inherent risk 5C.
Oxygen displacement by carbon dioxide or argon causing collapse within seconds; fume and ozone at many times open-shop levels; heat stress; and a rescue problem that has killed more responders than original casualties. 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.
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.
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.
Inside the shell: confined work, gas and heat
Boiler shops, storage tank builders and autoclave manufacturers roll plate into shells, fit heads and nozzles, weld seams with submerged arc, flux-cored and stick, then gouge, grind, heat treat and test. Much of that work happens from inside the vessel. Longitudinal and circumferential seams, nozzles and internals are welded and ground in a space with one small access, where carbon dioxide or argon, welding fume and grinding dust accumulate far above open-shop levels.
That is where the serious liability sits. Oxygen displacement by shielding or purge gas can cause collapse within seconds, and the facts note that the rescue problem in a vessel has killed more responders than original casualties. Welding fume inside the shell runs against the same 1 mg/m3 standard as the open floor, with manganese limits falling to 0.1 mg/m3 inhalable and 0.02 mg/m3 respirable from 1 December 2026, but with no volume to dilute it. Ozone and heat stress add to the load in a space that is hot and acoustically hard.
Two further hazards set this trade apart. Plate rolling and pressing draws material in faster than a person can let go, and a formed shell can spring or roll when released. Post-weld heat treatment leaves a vessel radiating for hours, with furnace combustion building carbon monoxide in the bay and resistance heating pads carrying high current.
Vessel entry and the plate rolls come first
The assessment treats work inside vessels, tanks and shells as confined space work and asks for the gates before anything else. Forced mechanical ventilation must change the air at the work position, not just at the manway. A confined space entry permit, atmospheric testing before and continuously during entry, a standby person at the access, and a rescue plan that has actually been practised are all unconditional.
Plate rolling and shell forming is the second focus. Fixed and interlocked guarding at pinch points with trip bars and emergency stops within reach, to AS/NZS 4024, is a gate, as is isolation and lock-out before any adjustment, cleaning, roll change or clearing of a jam. A guard, trip bar or emergency stop bypassed or known not to work while the rolls are in use is prohibited.
The remaining floor checks include grinder rests per AS/NZS 1788, lifting gear for plate and heads inspected against AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741, and how the heat treatment bay is ventilated for combustion products.
What a tank shop typically answers on day one
Vessel shops usually have a confined space procedure on paper. The No answers come from how it runs on a busy shift: a gas test at the start and none after, a standby person who drifts off to fetch consumables, a rescue plan never rehearsed through the real manway, and a fan blowing in at the hatch while the welder works at the far end of the shell. After a stress-relief cycle, workers go back inside while the vessel is still hot because the surface looks cool.
The top-tier controls that change the colour are design choices. Welding seams from outside where the joint design allows, submerged arc run from outside the shell instead of manual work inside, supply and exhaust ducted to the work position, and electrical resistance heating kept well maintained so pads and leads are not a shock source.
NOT RATED is easy to picture on the rolls. The plate is not tracking square, so the operator reaches in with the rolls live to nudge it, with the trip bar tied back because it kept stopping the job. Isolation before any adjustment is a gate and a bypassed trip bar is prohibited, so the plate rolling hazard shows NOT RATED until the guarding works and lock-out is followed.
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.
- ✓Boiler shops, storage tank builders and autoclave manufacturers
- ✓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.