Sheet Metal, Ducting and HVAC risk assessment (NSW)
57 hazards and 449 controls for hVAC contractors, ducting workshops and thin-gauge sheet fabricators, already identified and rated. Answer Yes, No or N/A online and download a finished Word report.
Tier 1 · Standard fabrication. 18 activities, 57 hazards, 449 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 (17 hazards), Process Safety (10) and Occupational Hygiene (30). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Sheet metal and ducting 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
Resistance spot welding sparks and fume, zinc-plated sheet handling, repetitive manual handling and sharp edges.
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.
Sheet Metal, Ducting and HVAC
Workplace risk assessment for hVAC contractors, ducting workshops and thin-gauge sheet fabricators in New South Wales: 18 activities, 57 hazards and 449 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
- ✓449 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, 57 hazards, 449 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 sheet metal and ducting
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.
Amputation of fingers and hands, degloving, crush injuries. Press brakes and guillotines account for a large share of serious machinery amputations in Australian workshops. Safety · inherent risk 5C.
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, and galvanised sheet adds zinc oxide fume causing metal fume fever. Many short exposures across a shift add up to the same dose as continuous welding, but are never measured because no single task looks significant. 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.
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, manganese and a thousand short tacks: the sheet metal exposure story
A ducting and HVAC shop rarely looks like a heavy welding environment. The arc work is spot welding, MIG tacking and brazing on light gauge and galvanised sheet, done in bursts at open benches between shearing, folding and seaming. Because no single job looks significant, extraction is seldom brought to the work, and the galvanised coating is burnt through rather than removed. The result is zinc oxide fume, the cause of metal fume fever, layered on top of welding fume that is classified IARC Group 1.
The health liability sits with fume and manganese. Manganese is present in essentially all mild steel arc welding fume, and from 1 December 2026 its workplace exposure limit falls from 1 mg/m3 to 0.1 mg/m3 inhalable and 0.02 mg/m3 respirable. A shop sitting on the 1 mg/m3 total fume figure can already be at or above those manganese limits. Incoming coil and sheet adds another unknown: painted, primed, plated or oiled stock cut as if it were bare steel can release lead, chromate or cadmium.
What separates this trade from a structural fabrication shop is the machinery and the pattern of work. The serious injury risk is concentrated on guillotine shears, folders, press brakes and notchers, where hands work close to the blade line and a second person often steadies the far end of a long sheet.
What an inspector asks to see in a ducting and HVAC workshop
The assessment walks you to the shears and brakes first. It asks whether every guillotine, brake and notcher has fixed, interlocked or light-curtain guarding proven to stop the machine, to AS/NZS 4024; whether foot pedals are guarded against accidental operation; whether two-hand control is used where the operator must hold the work; and whether isolation and lock-out happen before every die change, back gauge adjustment or jam clearance. Emergency stops must be within reach of every operating position and function-tested on a schedule.
On the fixed plant, the pedestal grinder and linisher work rest is checked against the AS/NZS 1788 gap of no more than 3 mm, with the tongue guard at no more than 6 mm. Lifting gear is checked for tags, working load limits and periodic inspection records to AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741. Portable tools, RCDs and welding machines are checked for current test tags.
On the hygiene side, you are asked whether local exhaust ventilation reaches the tacking and brazing benches, whether it has been tested since installation, whether it discharges back into the shop, and whether anyone has ever measured fume or manganese exposure.
Where a sheet metal shop lands on its first pass
Most shops answer Yes to personal protective equipment, housekeeping and cylinder storage, then start answering No once the questions reach extraction at the spot welder, air monitoring and checks on incoming coatings. Galvanised work is usually treated as normal work, so the zinc fume controls come back No almost across the board.
The top-tier controls that move a hazard from yellow to green here are engineering ones. Physical barriers or bollards separating walkways from forklift routes, racks rated for the stock with end stops on cantilever arms, a fixed cut-off saw or bandsaw in place of a hand-held grinder for straight cuts, and portable equipment supplied through residual current devices all carry far more weight than signage or training alone.
NOT RATED is what you see when a knock-out control fails. On the press brake, if you answer that a light curtain has been bypassed to speed up an awkward fold, or that a second person routinely holds the far end of a sheet inside the danger zone, the hazard is not scored at all.
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.
- ✓HVAC contractors, ducting workshops and thin-gauge sheet 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.