Plant risk assessment: what the WHS law asks, how to do one, and a free template with a plant register

A plant risk assessment is a written check of one item of plant (a machine, piece of equipment, appliance or tool) for one task or stage of its life. It identifies the hazards, rates how likely and how serious the harm could be, records controls chosen from the hierarchy of control, and sets when it gets reviewed.

No regulation names the form. The law requires the business that manages or controls plant to manage its risks, and the assessment is how most show they did. It is general information, not safety advice: the WHS regulator where the work happens is the authority, and a principal contractor’s own plant procedure wins on its site.

What counts as plant under WHS law

Plant is wider than most people expect. Section 4 of the Commonwealth Work Health and Safety Act 2011 defines plant as including any machinery, equipment, appliance, container, implement and tool, any component of those things, and anything fitted or connected to them. Queensland’s WHS Act carries the same words in its dictionary.

Safe Work Australia’s plant overview lists cranes, forklifts, scaffolds, shipping containers, drills and saws among its examples. On a civil job that is the excavator, the quick hitch, the bucket on the hitch, the concrete saw, and the generator and the trailer it came on.

Section 21 of Queensland’s Act applies to a business to the extent it manages or controls plant “in whole or in part” at a workplace, and requires it to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the plant is without risks to health and safety. Hired plant is control in part: the hire company controls the servicing, the PCBU on site controls where and how it is used, and each has duties for its part. “It’s a hire machine” has never been a control measure.

Victoria has its own law. WorkSafe Victoria’s plant and your legal duties page puts the plant obligations in Part 3.5 of the OHS Regulations 2017: employers must identify all hazards associated with plant and reduce any risk they cannot eliminate. The method below works under either law.

What the WHS regulations require for plant

The numbers here are from the Queensland Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011; check your own jurisdiction’s numbering. Regulation 203 says a person with management or control of plant must manage its risks, which brings in the general method in Part 3.1: identify reasonably foreseeable hazards (regulation 34), eliminate risks so far as is reasonably practicable or else minimise them (35), work down the hierarchy of control (36), maintain the controls (37) and review them (38). Then Part 5.1 adds specific controls:

Regulation 210’s “locked into the off position” is where lockout tagout on a machine starts. Regulation 213 is the one a plant register exists to prove.

Registered plant and design registration

Some plant must be registered before use. Safe Work Australia’s overview says Schedule 5 lists the plant designs and items that need registration, that a registrable item must not be used until registered, that item registration lasts five years, and that the registration number must be displayed on the plant where it is easy to see. An altered design that affects health and safety must be registered again.

In Queensland’s Schedule 5, item registration covers higher-hazard boilers and pressure vessels, tower cranes, lifts, building maintenance units, amusement devices, concrete placing booms and mobile cranes over 10 tonnes. Boom-type EWPs and prefabricated scaffolding need design registration only.

For registered plant, regulation 237 requires a record of all tests, inspections, maintenance, commissioning, decommissioning, dismantling and alterations, kept for as long as the plant is used or until control is handed over, available for inspection, and passed to whoever takes control next. If the crane changes hands without its records, so does the problem.

The model Code of Practice for plant

Safe Work Australia publishes the model Code of Practice: Managing the risks of plant in the workplace, last updated on 14 November 2024, for anyone who manages, controls, installs or commissions plant. It now includes guidance on vehicle roll-aways and safe immobilisation, such as parking on level ground and using wheel chocks. Anyone who has watched an unchocked trailer find the bottom of a slope will see why.

A model code has legal effect only where a jurisdiction approves it, so check with your local regulator.

How to do a plant risk assessment, step by step

1. Pin down the plant and the task. One item, by plant ID and serial number, not “the excavators”. Then the phase: set-up, normal use, cleaning, maintenance, transport, storage or decommissioning, because cleaning, unjamming and shifting a machine bring hazards its day job does not. Have the manufacturer’s manual open.
2. Walk it and list the hazards. At the machine, with the operator, not from a photo. Go category by category so nobody skips the boring ones: entanglement in shafts, augers, belts and rollers; crushing between moving parts or under a raised load; cutting and shearing at blades and closing mechanisms; striking by moving or ejected parts; stored energy in hydraulics, pneumatics, springs and a raised boom; noise, vibration, heat and dust; ergonomics, from getting on and off to lifting attachments; and the operator, including whether the plant needs a high risk work licence, a VOC, or both.
3. Rate the risk before controls. Likelihood and consequence on your site’s matrix, with the operator in the conversation. The rating’s job is to start an argument about the High ones, not finish it.
4. Control from the top down. Eliminate first. If that is not reasonably practicable, regulation 36 sets the order: substitute, isolate or engineer; then administrative controls; then PPE for whatever remains. Guards, interlocks, lockable isolators and exclusion zones sit near the top. A spotter, a procedure and earmuffs sit at the bottom, and an assessment listing only those stopped climbing early. Rate again after controls and name who owns each one.
5. Record it and set the review. File it against the plant ID on the register, with the next review date.

A worked example: skid steer with an auger

Illustrative, not one to copy. A civil crew is boring fence post holes on a sloping lot with a skid steer and hydraulic auger, two labourers setting posts behind it.

Note the first row. The auger is the one that kills people, and the control is distance, not a toolbox talk.

When to redo a plant risk assessment

Regulation 38 says controls must be reviewed when they are not working, before a change likely to create a new risk, when a new hazard is identified, when consultation calls for it, or when a health and safety representative asks. For plant:

• New plant, including a hire machine of a different make or model.
• A modification or new attachment.
• A move to a new site or task: new ground, services and people.
• An incident or near miss involving the plant.
• A notice from a WHS inspector about the plant.
• The scheduled review date, because “nothing changed” is worth confirming in writing.

The most common failure is the assessment for the old machine. The site swapped the 5-tonne excavator for a 13-tonne one in March, and the file still describes the little one.

What a plant register holds

A plant register is one row per item of plant the business owns, hires or manages: where regulations 213 and 237 get proved and the assessments get found.

A hire unit with no inspection record is a question for the hire company before it comes off the truck.

How it fits with prestarts, tickets and the SWMS

The plant prestart is the operator’s walk-around before each shift, and our toolbox talks and prestarts guide has a free plant prestart checklist. The prestart catches what changed overnight; the assessment decides what “safe to operate” means in the first place.

Construction work in an area with any movement of powered mobile plant is high risk construction work under regulation 291, so a SWMS comes first, and the day’s detail can sit in a JSA that references the plant assessment rather than rewriting it.

Download the free plant risk assessment template

Download the Humanz plant risk assessment template (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 plant sits on an asset register with its service dates, reminders when a service falls due, and allocation to the workers and shifts using it, so the register is a live record rather than a sheet someone remembers to update. 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 crews and plant on one board.

What’s in it

• Plant risk assessment sheet. The plant’s details, the site, the task or phase, and the licence or VOC needed. A hazard checklist with a row per category from step 2: risk before controls, the control and its hierarchy type, risk after controls, who is responsible. Ratings are drop-downs (Low, Medium, High, Extreme), none pre-filled. Sign-off and a review log close it.
• Plant register sheet. The fields in the table above, plus the assessment reference. An overdue service turns red.
• How to use sheet. One page, including what the workbook does not do.

It does not know your machine, ground or crew, and it does not replace the manufacturer’s inspection schedule or registration.

Where Humanz fits

Humanz holds plant and people in one system. The asset tracking side keeps an asset register with service dates and reminders when service falls due. Assets are allocated to workers and shifts as the roster is built, and a machine flagged out of service cannot be allocated until it is cleared. Licences and VOCs sit on each worker’s profile with expiry dates, checked at booking. The assessment itself can be a custom form completed on a phone (digital forms guide).

Humanz does not assess plant, choose controls or decide what is reasonably practicable; a competent person does that at the machine. It does not use AI, does not track the location of plant or people, and does not give safety or legal advice.

Frequently asked questions

What is a plant risk assessment?

A plant risk assessment is a written check of one item of plant for one task or stage of its life, such as operation, cleaning or maintenance. It identifies the hazards, rates how likely and how serious the harm could be, records controls chosen from the hierarchy of control, and sets a review date.

Is a plant risk assessment a legal requirement?

The duty is legal, though the form is not named. The WHS Regulations require a business with management or control of plant to manage its risks: identify the hazards, eliminate or minimise the risks, and review the controls. A written assessment is the usual evidence, and many principal contractors require one before plant comes on site.

What is considered plant under WHS law?

Plant includes any machinery, equipment, appliance, container, implement and tool, any component of them, and anything fitted or connected to them. That covers cranes, excavators, forklifts, scaffolds, generators, power tools and shipping containers. Attachments such as buckets, augers and quick hitches are plant too.

What should a plant register include?

A plant register should include each item’s plant ID, description, make, model and serial number, the registration number if it is registered plant, its location and owner or hire company, last inspection and next service dates, the operator licence required, and its status. For registered plant the regulations also require records of all tests, inspections, maintenance and alterations for as long as the plant is used.

What is registered plant?

Registered plant is an item of plant that must be registered with the WHS regulator before it can be used, such as tower cranes, lifts, concrete placing booms, mobile cranes rated over 10 tonnes and higher-hazard boilers and pressure vessels. Schedule 5 of the WHS Regulations lists the items and the plant designs that need registration. Item registration lasts five years, and the registration number must be displayed on the plant.

How often should a plant risk assessment be reviewed?

Whenever something changes, and on a set date in between. The WHS Regulations require controls to be reviewed when they are not working, before a change that could create a new risk, when a new hazard is found, or when a health and safety representative asks. In practice that means new plant, a modification, a new site or task, or an incident.

Does hired plant need a risk assessment?

Yes. The WHS duty applies to a business to the extent it manages or controls plant, in whole or in part, so the business using a hire machine on its site must manage the risks of where and how it is used. The hire company keeps duties for the parts it controls, such as servicing, so ask for its inspection and service records before the machine is unloaded.