Receiving, storage and materials handling risk assessment (NSW)
Forklifts, overhead cranes, racking, shipping containers, coil handling and gas and chemical storage – every hazard already identified and rated by a Certified Industrial Hygienist. You answer Yes, No or N/A on the floor; the calculator rates your residual risk and writes the Word report.
Section A – Receiving, Storage and Materials Handling. 6 activities, 56 hazards, 339 controls.
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The 6 activities in this section
Every activity is assessed in three parts – General Safety (24 hazards), Fire and Explosion (13) and Occupational Hygiene (19). Untick any activity you do not carry out and it drops out of your assessment.
✓Access to the Section A 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 pre-written Inherent Risk Assessment (.docx): every hazard in this section with what could go wrong, the possible consequence and its inherent risk rating – your reference copy, to read before the walk and share with the people you consult.
✓A printable Word walkthrough checklist for marking by hand on the workshop floor, an illustrated Quick Start Guide (PDF) and a one-page calculator login sheet.
What this pack is
The yard and receiving bays are where heavy mobile plant and pedestrians interact daily. This section secures your logistics operations, assessing everything from heavy coil storage to the off-gassing of imported components.
The receiving bay is where most serious workshop injuries start: trucks and forklifts sharing space with people on foot, coils and sheet packs lifted off trailers, containers opened with the load leaning on the doors, and racking carrying more than it was rated for.
This section covers all of it, activity by activity – unloading trucks, unpacking shipping containers, racking and storage, overhead crane and gantry lifting, forklift and telehandler operation, and the storage of gases and chemicals – with the fire risks and the occupational hygiene exposures (diesel and LPG exhaust, noise, manual handling, chemical vapours) assessed alongside the safety hazards.
It is written for a bolted steel tank workshop, but the activities are the same in any steel fabrication or sheet-metal business that receives coil, sheet and plate.
Section A – Receiving, Storage and Materials Handling
Workplace risk assessment for a bolted steel tank manufacturing workshop in New South Wales, Section A: Receiving, Storage and Materials Handling: 6 activities, 56 hazards and 339 controls covering pedestrian and forklift traffic, falling steel coils, diesel engine exhaust and residual container fumigants. 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. Includes a printable walkthrough checklist and a Quick Start Guide.
- ✓56 hazards across 6 activities, each with its consequences and inherent risk already rated
- ✓339 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 pre-written Inherent Risk Assessment in Word, a blank walkthrough checklist, an illustrated Quick Start Guide and a calculator login sheet
Section A – Receiving, Storage and Materials Handling. 6 activities, 56 hazards, 339 controls.
Secure checkout via Stripe. Sign in and start as soon as the payment goes through.
Need more than one section? See the complete workshop
The most serious hazards in receiving, storage and materials handling
A sample of the 56 hazards in this section, each shown with its consequence and the inherent risk rating given by a Certified Industrial Hygienist before any controls are counted. The controls themselves are in the calculator.
Crush injuries, multiple fractures, fatality. Vehicle-related incidents are consistently among the leading mechanisms of work-related fatality in Australia (Safe Work Australia). General Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Crush injuries, fatality; damage to material and vehicle. General Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Crush of lower limbs, fatality; coil and floor damage. General Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Crush injuries, fatality; damage to coated panels. General Safety · inherent risk 4C.
Vapour ignition, fire spread; burns. Fire and Explosion · inherent risk 4C.
Methyl bromide – neurotoxicity, pulmonary oedema, fatality. Phosphine – pulmonary oedema, fatality. Formaldehyde – IARC Group 1 (nasopharyngeal cancer), sensory irritant, sensitiser. Studies of import containers (e.g. Hamburg port) have found fumigant and industrial chemical residues above exposure limits, including in unlabelled containers. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4B.
Severe chemical burns; HF causes deep tissue damage and systemic toxicity (hypocalcaemia), potentially fatal. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4B.
Oxygen deficiency, unconsciousness, fatality. Occupational Hygiene · inherent risk 4B.
Vehicle fire spreading to building, stored stock and roof; business interruption. Fire and Explosion · inherent risk 4B.
How one hazard is rated
Hazard A1.1 – Mobile plant – trucks and forklifts in receiving bay – starts with an inherent risk of 4C, rated before any controls are counted. The calculator lists 12 controls for it, from elimination and engineering 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, the calculator 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.
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.
- ✓Workshops that unload coil, sheet or plate from trucks and containers
- ✓Sites running forklifts, telehandlers and overhead or gantry cranes
- ✓Businesses storing steel in racking, coil cradles or stacked packs
- ✓Anyone holding cylinders of welding gas, LPG, paints, thinners or acids
- ✓Owners and managers who need a traffic management and lifting risk assessment a SafeWork NSW inspector will accept
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)
- §SafeWork NSW Code of Practice: How to manage work health and safety risks
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 finalised, fully formatted .docx record with your Action Plan already inside it. Print it, sign it off, and you are audit-ready for this part of your workshop.
Price includes GST · 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, 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 – for example exposure monitoring by an occupational hygienist. The limits of the assessment are set out in “How it works” and at the front of every report.