Conducting machinery risk assessments is essential for maintaining a safe workplace as well as fulfilling legal requirements to the best of your ability. Risk assessments help identify potential hazards related to machinery and outline necessary control measures to mitigate these risks, thereby helping to ensure the safety of your workers.
The most important measures of risk assessment are:
Identifying hazards – determining what may cause harm.
Assessing risks – rating the risk of harm.
Controlling risks – minimising or eliminating the risk of harm.
Reviewing control measures – reviewing whether the controls actually minimised or eliminated the risk of harm.
As you can see these measures are vital for ensuring safe machinery and equipment, which is a very important reason to make sure you receive a comprehensive risk assessment from a machine supplier.
Machinery suppliers have a legal legislative obligation to provide owners and users with a safe piece of plant, and where hazards still exist, to minimise the risks associated with those hazards and provide information to users to allow safe use.
Tender documents and supply terms and conditions should include clauses requiring suppliers to provide this information. Many Ideagen Plant Assessor clients include something similar to the following clauses to specifically highlight this requirement when obtaining plant from machinery suppliers.
“Plant Risk Assessment Required”
Pursuant to the requirements of Workplace Health and Safety Legislation the supplier shall provide the purchaser with a comprehensive plant risk assessment for the plant being purchased.
The plant risk assessment should contain details of:
Hazards that have not been eliminated during design and/or manufacture.
The risk associated with each remaining hazard.
Details of risk treatments implemented by the supplier to minimise the risk of remaining hazards.
Details of risk treatments recommended to be undertaken by the purchaser.
The residual risks associated with each risk treatment.
The purchaser uses the Ideagen Plant Assessor plant risk assessment system, and would prefer suppliers to provide risk assessments in Plant Assessor format. Contact us on 1300 728 852.
By requiring a plant risk assessment from machinery suppliers, not only are you saving the time and money of preparing that information yourself, you should be getting the best information possible.
Purchaser obligations
As the purchaser, you also have a responsibility to ensure you receive the risk assessment, plus any other information from the supplier. You must work with the supplier to see all outstanding issues have been rectified before delivery or accept the hazards and implement controls as specified by the risk assessment before use.
Originally published September 2022 Updated July 2024
About the Author
Paul Dean is the Founder of Ideagen Plant Assessor. Paul spent 10 years working in the construction industry, and 5 years in the machinery supply industry where he developed a deep knowledge about mobile plant and machinery compliance. Paul's idea for Plant Assessor was created in 2004 after working in the motor vehicle and machinery auction industry and realising the complexity and lack of standardisation when managing machinery and equipment compliance. Read More.
Disclaimer: This information is intended to provide general information on the subject matter. This is not intended as legal or expert advice for your specific situation. You should seek professional advice before acting or relying on the content of this information.
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