Plant Risk Assessment: Machinery and Equipment

A plant risk assessment is a structured look at one item of plant – a machine, vehicle, tool or piece of equipment – to find how it could hurt someone, decide how serious that is, and record the controls that will stop it. In Australian work health and safety law "plant" is a very wide word. It covers machinery, equipment, appliances, containers, implements and tools, and anything fitted or connected to them. A guillotine is plant. So is a forklift, a bench grinder, an air compressor, a conveyor and a ladder-mounted winch.

The person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) who manages or controls plant must manage the risks it creates. The model Code of Practice Managing risks of plant in the workplace sets out how, and it follows the same four steps as every other risk assessment: identify hazards, assess risks, control risks, review controls.

You need to assess plant before it is used for the first time, and again whenever something changes. In practice that means:

• Before new or second-hand plant is commissioned. Second-hand and imported plant is where missing guards and non-compliant controls are most often found.
• Before plant is modified, relocated or used for a different purpose. A change of tooling, material or layout can create a hazard that the original assessment never considered.
• After an incident or near miss involving the plant.
• When a worker or Health and Safety Representative raises a concern.
• At a regular interval. Most workplaces review plant assessments every 12 months, and sooner for high-risk items.

Some plant also has to be design-registered or item-registered with the regulator – certain cranes, pressure vessels, boilers and lifts, for example. Registration is a separate duty. It does not replace the risk assessment.

Walk around the machine with the person who operates it and the person who maintains it. They see different things. Work through each of these in turn:

• Entanglement and drawing-in – rotating shafts, chucks, rolls, belts and chains that catch clothing, hair or gloves.
• Crushing, shearing and cutting – press rams, guillotine blades, closing jaws, the gap between a moving table and a fixed frame.
• Impact and ejection – workpieces, broken tooling, abrasive wheels and swarf thrown from the machine.
• Stored energy – hydraulic and pneumatic pressure, springs, raised loads and flywheels that keep moving or release after the power is off.
• Electricity – damaged leads, exposed terminals, controls that are not extra-low voltage, no residual current protection.
• Noise and vibration – the hazards that do their damage slowly and are left off most plant assessments.
• Fume, dust, mist and heat generated by the process.
• Slips, access and ergonomics – reaching over moving parts, climbing on the machine to clear a jam, awkward loading heights.
• Mobile plant hazards – collision with pedestrians, tip-over, falling objects, reversing.

A safe machine with an untrained operator is not a controlled risk. For every item of plant the assessment should record how operators are trained, how their competence is checked, and who is authorised to use it.

Some plant also needs a high risk work licence. The classes cover forklift trucks and order-picking forklift trucks, cranes and hoists, elevating work platforms with a boom length of 11 metres or more, reach stackers, dogging and rigging, scaffolding, and pressure equipment. A forklift licence is required whatever the rated capacity of the truck – only pedestrian-operated trucks and pallet trucks are excluded. The assessment should confirm that each operator's licence is current and is the right class for the plant they use.

Supervision matters most for new and young workers, labour-hire workers and anyone using a machine for the first time.

Plant must be maintained, inspected and, where necessary, tested by a competent person, in line with the manufacturer's recommendations. Where there are none, a competent person's recommendations apply, and failing that, inspection at least annually.

In practice the assessment should ask:

• Is there a pre-start check for this item, is it actually done, and what happens when a fault is found? A tag-out system for defective plant is the control that matters.
• Is there a maintenance schedule and a log that is kept up to date?
• Are safety-critical items – guards, interlocks, emergency stops, brakes, limit switches, lifting gear – on the inspection list by name?
• Is maintenance carried out under isolation, with stored energy released?
• For second-hand plant, was it supplied with its hazards and any faults identified in writing, as a supplier is required to do?

The hierarchy of control applies to plant more strictly than anywhere else, because the consequences are amputations and fatalities. Signs, training and gloves do not make an unguarded machine safe.

Guarding. Where a guard is used, it should be a permanently fixed physical barrier if access is not needed during operation, maintenance or cleaning. If access is needed, the guard should be interlocked so the dangerous movement stops before anyone can reach it. A physical barrier that can only be altered or removed with a tool is the next option, and presence-sensing systems such as light curtains are used where a physical barrier is not reasonably practicable. A guard that is routinely removed to "get the job done" is a sign that the guard is the wrong design, not that the operator is careless.

Isolation. Every item of plant needs a way to be isolated from all its energy sources and locked in that state while someone works on it. That means a lockable isolator, personal locks and tags for each person, a way to release stored energy, and a test to prove the machine is dead before hands go in.

Emergency stops. Where plant has an emergency stop control, the WHS Regulations require it to be prominent, clearly and durably marked and immediately accessible to each operator; any handle, bar or push button must be coloured red; and the control must not be able to be adversely affected by an electrical or electronic circuit malfunction. An emergency stop is a back-up. It is not a substitute for guarding.

There is no mandatory form, but an inspector, an insurer or a principal contractor will expect to see:

1. The item of plant, its location, and who assessed it and when.
2. Each hazard, what could go wrong and the likely consequence.
3. A risk rating before controls (the inherent risk) and after the controls you actually have (the residual risk).
4. The controls, ranked by the hierarchy of control, and which of them are in place today.
5. An action plan for every control that is missing, with a responsible person and a due date.
6. The workers and Health and Safety Representatives who were consulted.
7. A review date.

Keep the assessment for as long as the plant is in use and review it as the plant and the work change. Separately, for plant that requires registration, the Regulations require records of all tests, inspections, maintenance, commissioning, decommissioning, dismantling and alterations to be kept for the period the plant is used, or until you relinquish control of it – and then handed to the next person who takes control.

Item: horizontal bandsaw in a fabrication workshop.

Notice that the two hazards still red or near-red after controls both need an engineering fix. Issuing more PPE would not have moved either of them.

Mobile construction plant – forklifts, excavators, telehandlers, elevating work platforms, cranes, loaders and compactors – is assessed for pedestrian interaction, stability, operator competence and licensing, and pre-start inspection. We publish a ready-made risk assessment for each of 17 common equipment types, in every state and territory edition.

Fixed workshop machinery is a different assessment. Guillotines, press brakes, plate rolls, turret punches, drills, saws, grinders and plasma cutters are assessed machine by machine for guarding, interlocks, isolation and the health hazards of the process. Our online risk assessment for cutting and forming machinery covers eleven machine activities and 82 hazards, with every control listed for you to answer Yes, No or N/A on the workshop floor.