Hot work permit: what it covers, who signs it, and the fire watch, with a free template

A hot work permit is a written authorisation for welding, cutting, grinding, brazing or any other job that makes heat or sparks where something in range can burn or explode. It names the job, the place and the time, records the fire hazards found and what was done about each, puts a named fire watch on the job, and closes only when the area is confirmed cold.

No regulation in Australia names it. It is the site’s way of showing that the fire and explosion duty was checked before the first spark, and most principal contractors, insurers and asset owners make it a condition of working on their site. The free workbook further down carries a hot work permit sheet and a register.

Why a permit, when no regulation names one

The model WHS Regulations, carried in Queensland’s Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011, talk about atmospheres and ignition sources rather than welding. Regulation 51 makes an atmosphere hazardous when “the concentration of flammable gas, vapour, mist, or fumes exceeds 5% of the LEL” (the lower explosive limit), among other conditions, and requires a business to manage the risk. Regulation 52 does the same for an ignition source in a hazardous atmosphere, and regulation 73 forbids introducing an ignition source into a confined space where it could cause a fire or explosion. The words “hot work” do not appear anywhere in the regulation.

So the permit is a control, not a legal form. The regulators say so plainly. SafeWork NSW’s hot work safety alert says that before any hot work on site “it is essential to implement a hot work permit system”, with a checklist of hazards and controls signed off by the people in control of the site and the workers. WorkSafe WA’s hot work fire safety essentials lists “Complete a hot-work permit, where relevant” among its steps. The standard behind most site systems is AS 1674.1:2025, Safety in welding and allied processes, Part 1: Fire precautions, which replaced the 1997 edition many site procedures still quote.

The alert behind the NSW wording is worth knowing. Oxy-acetylene cutting set fire to plastic mesh screening on a building site, and about 20 people were treated for smoke inhalation. Nobody sets out to light the screening, which is the whole point of a permit that asks what the sparks can reach.

What counts as hot work

Hot work is any task that makes enough heat, flame or sparks to ignite something nearby:

• Welding of every kind: stick, MIG, TIG and gas welding, on site or in a temporary bay.
• Cutting: oxy-fuel and plasma cutting, and thermal lancing.
• Grinding and abrasive cutting: angle grinders and cut-off saws throw sparks a long way. SafeWork SA’s angle grinder alert counted 23 notifiable grinder incidents in one financial year, one of them a grass fire started by grinding sparks.
• Brazing, soldering and heat treatment with a torch.
• Roofing and waterproofing work with a torch or a bitumen kettle.
• Anything else with an open flame outside a designated hot work area, such as a gas axe freeing a seized bolt.

A designated hot work area (a fabrication bay built for it, with the combustibles kept out and the extinguishers on the wall) usually runs without a permit for routine work. The permit is for hot work anywhere else, which on most sites means anywhere a welder carries the lead to.

Outdoors, fire weather adds its own rule. In Victoria, the CFA’s welding and grinding safety page says that on Total Fire Ban days “welding, grinding, and other hot work activities that create heat and sparks are banned” outside, and that “a single spark is enough to start a fire in the right conditions.” Other states have their own fire danger rules; the fire service where the work is happens to be the authority on them.

The checks before the first spark

A hot work permit asks the same questions in roughly the same order on every site. What changes is the answers.

Can it be done another way? Cold cutting, unbolting, a hydraulic splitter, or carrying the job to the workshop all remove the fire hazard and the permit with it. WorkSafe Victoria’s alert on drums and fuel tanks starts there: “Eliminate hot work on drums and tanks.”

What, where and for how long. One job, one location, a stated start and expiry. “Welding, workshop, all week” is not a permit.

What can burn within range. WorkSafe WA’s checklist covers fire hazards “within 15 metres of the hot work”; your site’s permit may set a different radius, and the permit should say which it uses. Within it, combustibles are moved, or covered with fire blankets, or wetted down; floors, drains, wall penetrations and the level below are checked, because sparks fall through gaps nobody looks at. Outdoors in fire season, SafeWork SA asks for “a 10-metre cleared space around the area, and water or an appropriate extinguisher” at hand for grinding.

Containers and atmospheres. A drum, tank or pipe that held fuel, oil or solvent is the hot work job regulators warn about most; WorkSafe Victoria reports an increase in serious incidents involving modified drums and tanks, and is blunt: “Rinsing tanks and drums with water does not guarantee removal of residue or vapours”, and a container should be fully decontaminated and certified gas-free by a competent person before anyone cuts it. WorkSafe WA sets the test line: the flammable gas or vapour concentration must be “less than 5 percent of its lower explosion limit (LEL)”, and work stops if it rises above it. After a 2022 explosion while cutting a waste oil tank at a Narellan pit, SafeWork NSW’s incident release told industry to “treat the ullage space in waste oil tanks as a hazardous atmosphere until testing has proven otherwise”, and to run a hot work permit system that addresses contaminated or flammable atmospheres. Record the reading, the time and the tester on the permit.

Isolations. Fuel, gas and process lines isolated where the work is on or near them, through the site’s lockout tagout procedure. Smoke detectors or sprinklers isolated for the work only with the site’s agreement, with the name of the person who reinstates them and when.

Fire equipment at the work. An extinguisher of the right type, or a charged hose, checked and in date, beside the job rather than on the wall at the other end of the building.

The people. The person doing the work holds the competencies the site requires, the fire watch is named and briefed, and the issuer has walked the job. A permit signed in the ute from a description has not met the job.

The fire watch, during and after

The fire watch is the part of a hot work permit that most often goes missing, usually because the watcher is also the offsider passing the rods.

During the work, the watch is a named person with an extinguisher whose only job is watching where the sparks land: behind the work, below it, through the gaps. WorkSafe WA says to “appoint a fire watcher if required”; SafeWork NSW and WorkSafe Victoria both say to use a designated fire watch person to monitor the hot work environment. On most sites the permit makes it required rather than optional.

After the work stops, the watch stays. Smouldering insulation, timber or dust can take a while to show, which is why every regulator page on hot work ends with the same instruction. WorkSafe WA says to inspect so that “no smouldering materials remain” after the hot work; SafeWork NSW says to “conduct a post work check for smouldering material before leaving the area”; and WorkSafe Victoria, after a hot works fire at a quarry, says to check before breaks and at the end of the shift as well as when the work is complete.

None of the regulator pages sets how long the watch stays after the last spark. Your site’s permit system or its insurer does, and the permit should record two times: when the hot work finished and when the fire watch ended. A permit with the second box blank is a permit nobody closed.

Who signs a hot work permit

Three signatures, at minimum, before the first spark:

At close-out the issuer, or the person the site’s system names, signs again once the fire watch confirms the area is cold. On a site where a principal contractor runs the permit system, a subcontractor’s crew works under the principal’s permit, not its own form, and the issuer is usually the principal’s supervisor.

Welding in or on a confined space needs both permits, each referencing the other: the hot work permit for the fire risk and the confined space entry permit for the entry. The permit to work guide covers how the permit types fit together, including the general permit for high-risk work with no form of its own.

Download the free hot work permit template

Download the Humanz permit to work templates (Excel, .xlsx). No sign-up, no email gate. It opens in any current version of Excel and imports into Google Sheets (File, then Import).

A spreadsheet is the fallback, not how we would run this. Humanz is a workforce management app, and in the app a permit is a digital form with an approval step: the issuer signs off on a phone, the permit sits against the job, and the register is a report rather than a sheet. We publish this template anyway, free and with no sign-up, because a good sheet beats a blank page and not every crew is ready for software. If yours is, see how Humanz runs site paperwork.

What’s in it

• Hot work permit sheet. Job and location, the hot work and the equipment, the permit period with start and expiry, ten checks (combustibles within the site’s radius, floors and openings, extinguisher at the work, fire watch assigned for the post-work period, gas test where required, isolations, warnings and signs, ventilation, PPE, alarm isolation and reinstatement), boxes for the fire hazards and other hazards found, signatures for the issuer, the person in charge and the fire watch, and a close-out with the finish time and the time the fire watch ended.
• Permit register sheet. One row per permit; an open permit past its expiry turns red.
• The other permits. The same workbook carries a general permit, a confined space entry permit and a working at heights permit, so a job that needs two can use matching forms.

The template does not know your site, your plant or your atmosphere. Its lines are prompts; the content under them is yours, the site’s permit system wins where it has one, and none of it is safety advice.

Where paper hot work permits break

The fire watch box. On paper the fire watch signs at the start, and nothing records whether they stayed. The post-work time is filled in later from memory, or not at all.

The extended job. The weld runs past the permit’s expiry, and the crew keeps going on the old permit because the issuer has gone home. The permit book says the job finished at three.

The ticket nobody checked. The permit assumes the welder holds the site’s required competencies and the fire watch knows how to use the extinguisher. Whether either is true lives in a folder in another office.

The register. A permit book shows what was issued, not what is still open. After a fire, the first question is which permits were live in that area that afternoon.

Running hot work permits on a phone with Humanz

Humanz is a workforce management platform with a custom form builder, and a hot work permit is one of the forms it is built to carry. Your admin builds the permit once from the workbook or the site’s own layout: mandatory checks that stop the form submitting with a blank gas test, a conditional gas test section that opens only when the work is near flammables or on a container, photo capture for the area before and after, and signatures for the issuer, the person in charge and the fire watch, plus the close-out. The crew completes it on a phone at the job, offline if the signal drops, and every submission is timestamped and stored against the job and the worker, with the version of the form they used.

The roster uses the tickets. Welding competencies, fire warden or extinguisher training, and the site induction sit on each worker’s profile with expiry alerts, and compliance rules set per client and per site stop a shift booking a worker whose ticket for the task is missing or expired. Employees, labour hire and subcontractors sit on one roster under the same rules, which matters because the welder and the fire watch are often from different employers. Job messages keep their history, so who confirmed the area was cold, and when, is a search rather than a phone call.

Humanz does not issue permits, test atmospheres, assess fire risk or decide which control is reasonably practicable; a competent person does that at the job. It does not use AI to generate or assess anything, does not track a worker’s location, and does not give safety or legal advice. It carries the permit form, dates each completion against the worker and the job, and stops the roster booking someone whose ticket for the task is not current.

Frequently asked questions

What is a hot work permit?

A hot work permit is a written authorisation for welding, cutting, grinding, brazing or any other work that produces heat, flame or sparks where something within range could burn or explode. It records the job, location and period, the fire hazards found and the controls applied, any gas tests and isolations, and the named fire watch. It is signed by the issuer, the person in charge of the work and the fire watch before work starts, and closed only when the area is confirmed cold.

Is a hot work permit a legal requirement in Australia?

No regulation names a hot work permit, but the duty it meets is legal. The WHS Regulations require businesses to manage the risk of hazardous atmospheres and ignition sources, and regulators such as SafeWork NSW describe a hot work permit system as essential before hot work on site. Most principal contractors, insurers and asset owners require one as a condition of working on their sites.

What does a fire watch do during hot work?

A fire watch is a named person with an extinguisher at hand whose only job during hot work is to watch where sparks and heat land, including behind, below and through gaps, and to deal with any fire immediately. After the work stops, the fire watch stays for the period the site’s permit sets and checks for smouldering material before the permit is closed. Regulators in Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria all call for a fire watch and a post-work check for smouldering.

How far do combustibles need to be cleared for hot work?

It depends on the site’s permit system and the conditions, but WorkSafe WA’s hot work guidance asks for fire hazards within 15 metres of the hot work to be controlled. SafeWork SA asks for a 10-metre cleared space for outdoor grinding in the fire danger season. Combustibles inside the radius are removed, covered with fire blankets or wetted down, and the permit should state the radius it uses.

Can you weld or cut a drum that held fuel?

Only after it has been fully decontaminated and certified gas-free by a competent person, and WorkSafe Victoria’s advice is to eliminate hot work on drums and tanks wherever possible. Rinsing with water does not guarantee that residue or vapour is gone. Before any hot work on a container that held flammables, the atmosphere is tested and work proceeds only if flammable gas or vapour is below 5 percent of its lower explosive limit.

Who can issue a hot work permit?

A hot work permit is issued by a person the site’s permit system authorises, usually a supervisor or permit officer trained in that system who is not doing the work and who has inspected the job in person. On a site run by a principal contractor, the principal’s permit system and issuers normally apply to every subcontractor. Most sites keep a list of authorised issuers and a register of every permit issued.

Is hot work allowed on a Total Fire Ban day?

In Victoria, the CFA says welding, grinding and other hot work that creates heat and sparks is banned outdoors on Total Fire Ban days. Other states and territories set their own fire danger rules, which can restrict or ban outdoor hot work, sometimes with permit or exemption arrangements. Check the fire service rules for the location before any outdoor hot work in the fire danger season.