Stainless Steel and High-Alloy Fabrication risk assessment (NSW)
60 hazards and 507 controls for food, dairy, beverage, pharmaceutical and cleanroom fabricators, 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, 60 hazards, 507 controls.
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The 19 activities in this assessment
Every activity is assessed in three parts — Safety (16 hazards), Process Safety (11) and Occupational Hygiene (33). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Stainless steel and high alloy 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
Hexavalent chromium, a Group 1 carcinogen, with nickel fume, ozone generated at the arc, and hydrofluoric and nitric pickling pastes.
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.
Stainless Steel and High-Alloy Fabrication
Workplace risk assessment for food, dairy, beverage, pharmaceutical and cleanroom fabricators in New South Wales: 19 activities, 60 hazards and 507 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.
- ✓60 hazards across 19 activities, each with its consequences and starting risk already rated
- ✓507 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, 60 hazards, 507 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 stainless steel and high alloy
A sample of the 60 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.
Zinc fume causing metal fume fever, lead from old paint triggering lead process duties including notification and biological monitoring, cadmium from plating, and isocyanates from two-pack coatings. None of these are controlled by the arrangements assessed here, and carbon contamination also destroys the corrosion resistance of the stainless. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4C.
Hexavalent chromium and nickel released at high rate in a very fine, deeply respirable form; ozone and nitrogen dioxide causing airway injury and delayed pulmonary oedema; arc eye and skin burn; noise-induced hearing loss. Plasma cutting is commonly the single highest-exposure task in a stainless workshop. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4C.
Welding fumes are classified IARC Group 1 (carcinogenic to humans, lung cancer, with limited evidence for kidney cancer). The exposure standard for welding fumes (not otherwise classified) is 1 mg/m3 as an 8-hour time weighted average, and it carries through into the Workplace Exposure Limits from 1 December 2026. For stainless the total fume figure is the least demanding of the limits that apply: chromium and nickel are reached first. 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.
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.
Chromium, nickel and pickling acid in a stainless shop
Stainless and high-alloy fabricators serving food, dairy, beverage, pharmaceutical and cleanroom clients work mostly with TIG and MIG, plasma cutting, and a great deal of grinding, linishing and polishing. Every arc struck on stainless oxidises chromium in the parent metal and consumable to hexavalent chromium, and carries nickel out in the same plume. The post-weld stage adds pickling pastes and gels containing hydrofluoric acid, plus passivation and electrochemical cleaning.
Hexavalent chromium carries the heaviest liability. It causes lung, nasal and sinus cancer, septal perforation, chrome ulcers and sensitisation. The current workplace exposure standard is 0.05 mg/m3 as Cr, but from 1 December 2026 it is treated as a non-threshold genotoxic carcinogen with no exposure limit at all, and the duty becomes elimination and minimisation regardless of any measurement. Nickel compounds cause lung and nasal cancer and lifelong sensitisation, and the nickel metal limit falls from 1 mg/m3 to 0.1 mg/m3 on the same date.
The difference from a mild steel shop is which limit you hit first. For stainless, the 1 mg/m3 total welding fume figure is the least demanding one; chromium and nickel are reached long before it. Plasma cutting without an extracted or water table is commonly the single highest-exposure task on the floor.
What gets checked first on a stainless floor
The assessment asks about chromium health monitoring early, because chromium is a Schedule 14 substance and health monitoring is required where there is a significant risk of exposure. It then asks where plasma cutting happens, whether the table is extracted or water-backed, and whether capture at the TIG and MIG torch is close enough to matter for a carcinogen with no safe level.
Argon back-purging is the knock-out area most specific to this trade. Personal oxygen monitors for everyone on or near purged assemblies, purge shut off and the assembly ventilated and tested before anyone reaches in, and confined space entry arrangements for any entry are all gates. Reaching into a purged assembly without shutting off and testing is a prohibited practice.
The inspector-facing basics still apply: emergency stops on the bandsaw, cut-off saw and pedestal grinder to AS/NZS 4024, work rest gaps per AS/NZS 1788, tagged lifting gear against AS 3775, AS 4497 and AS 2741, and a chemical register covering the hydrofluoric pickling products.
How a sanitary fabricator usually scores the first time
A typical first pass shows strong weld quality systems and weak exposure systems. The TIG extraction arm is left parked. Polishing and linishing of weld metal happen at an open bench. Pickling gel is brushed on at the bench with ordinary gloves and no thought to how an acid burn would be treated. Nobody has had chromium health monitoring, and carbon steel offcuts share the rack with stainless stock.
What turns yellow into green here is usually substitution and capture at source. Electrochemical weld cleaning instead of hydrofluoric paste where the finish allows, extracted or water tables for plasma, on-torch extraction for MIG, and dedicated stainless tooling that keeps carbon steel and coated stock out of the bay. Because chromium carries no limit from December 2026, a respirator programme supports these controls but will not carry the score on its own.
NOT RATED in a stainless shop tends to look like this. A welder finishes the root on a dairy line spool, the argon is still running, and he leans in with a torch light to check penetration. No oxygen monitor, no purge shut-off. The facts treat that as a prohibited practice, and the argon purging hazard will not rate until monitors are worn and the purge is stopped and the atmosphere tested before anyone reaches in.
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.
- ✓Food, dairy, beverage, pharmaceutical and cleanroom 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.