Shipyard and Boat Repair risk assessment (NSW)
57 hazards and 452 controls for slipways, dry docks and commercial marine vessel maintenance, 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, 57 hazards, 452 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 (29). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Shipyard and boat repair 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
Hot work over water, double-bottom and tank confined spaces, anti-fouling marine coatings and multi-gas atmospheres.
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.
Shipyard and Boat Repair
Workplace risk assessment for slipways, dry docks and commercial marine vessel maintenance in New South Wales: 19 activities, 57 hazards and 452 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 19 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated
- ✓452 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, 57 hazards, 452 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 shipyard and boat repair
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.
Falls from height are a leading cause of workplace death in Australia. A fall into water adds drowning, and a worker in leathers and boots with a helmet cannot self-rescue. Cold water and current reduce survival time sharply. Safety · inherent risk 5C.
Explosion from hot work on or adjacent to a tank that still holds hydrocarbon vapour; asphyxiation in void spaces and cofferdams; exposure to organotin and copper biocides from antifouling; asbestos from older lagging and gaskets; and lead and chromate from marine primers. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 5B.
Asphyxiation, explosion and heat stress in a space from which retrieval is extremely difficult. Confined space entry in shipyards has repeatedly killed the original entrant and then the people who went in after them without breathing apparatus. 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.
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.
Tanks, voids and antifouling: the shipyard exposure story
Hull repair puts welders where fume has nowhere to go. Double bottoms, tanks, voids and cofferdams trap welding fume, shielding gas and whatever the vessel last carried, and heat builds quickly inside steel spaces. Welding fume is classified IARC Group 1 with an exposure standard of 1 mg/m3 as an 8-hour time weighted average, and manganese limits fall to 0.1 mg/m3 inhalable and 0.02 mg/m3 respirable from 1 December 2026. In a confined space those figures are reached far faster than on an open slipway.
The coatings carry their own liability. Removing antifouling releases copper and organotin biocides, toxic by inhalation, ingestion and skin contact, and organotins are reproductive toxicants. Older marine primers add lead and chromate, and older lagging and gaskets may contain asbestos. The same material contaminates the hardstand, stormwater and waterway, which is a separate regulatory exposure for the business.
What sets a shipyard apart from a land-based fabrication shop is the combination of confined space, height and water. A tank that still holds hydrocarbon vapour explodes under hot work, a void or cofferdam can asphyxiate the entrant and then the rescuers, and a fall from staging into water adds drowning for a worker in leathers and boots who cannot self-rescue.
What an inspector asks to see on a slipway or dry dock
The assessment starts with vessel receipt and tank certification: whether tank contents, coatings and residues are established before hot work, and whether spaces are certified before anyone goes in. For entry into double bottoms, tanks, voids and cofferdams it asks for a confined space entry permit, atmospheric testing before and continuously during entry, a standby person at the access, and a rescue plan practised for that access. It also asks whether forced mechanical ventilation delivers air changes at the work face rather than only at the manhole.
Work at height on hulls and staging is checked against the water. Edge protection comes first; where work over water cannot be avoided, a suitable lifejacket, a rescue craft or throw line, and a rescue plan must be in place before any fall arrest or over-water work begins. Working over water with no lifejacket, no rescue means and no nominated watcher is a prohibited practice.
Lifting gear is checked against AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741, and welding machines and portable tools for current test tags.
What a boat repair yard usually finds on its first pass
Yards with a commercial marine background often answer Yes to confined space permits and gas testing, but No to continuous monitoring during entry and to a rescue plan actually practised at that particular manhole. Ventilation is usually a fan blowing into the access rather than air moved across the work face. Antifouling removal is frequently done dry, with no capture of the dust on the hardstand.
The top-tier controls that turn a yellow hazard green here are physical ones: bollards or barriers separating walkways from forklift and travel lift routes, lifting designed so loads are not carried over people, purpose-made lifting beams and plate clamps for hull plate, and residual current protection on every portable tool used in wet and conductive conditions around the hull.
NOT RATED looks like this on a slipway. A welder works off staging along the waterline of a vessel still in the water, with no lifejacket, no throw line and nobody watching from the wharf. That answer triggers the prohibited practice for over-water work, and the hazard receives no residual score until rescue means and a watcher are in place.
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.
- ✓Slipways, dry docks and commercial marine vessel maintenance
- ✓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.