Health and safety in manufacturing and engineering.
Workshops, fabrication and production environments combine machinery, lifting, hot work, hazardous substances and traffic, often in businesses with lean management teams where the owner is also the officer. QHSE works with manufacturers, engineering firms, sawmills and wood processors on the machinery and plant risk, the quality system customers ask for, and a health and safety system sized to the business.
What matters here
In a manufacturing or engineering business the main risks are on the floor and easy to name: machinery with moving parts, cranes and lifting, welding and hot work, solvents and hazardous substances, forklifts and trucks in the yard, and noise and dust that do their damage slowly. The difficulty is rarely knowing what the risks are. It is finding the time and the expertise to deal with them properly when the same few people are also running production, quoting jobs and managing customers.
That is why the work here is sized to the business. A machine guarding assessment that produces a prioritised list with photographs and costs is worth more to a workshop than a thick report. A critical risk register of six items that everyone knows is worth more than a hazard register of two hundred that nobody reads. From 1 April 2027 the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Act says much the same thing, with businesses under 20 workers asked to concentrate on their critical risks and officer duties narrowed to their governance role.
Rob Feasey, principal of QHSE, is a Certified Machinery Safety Expert, a Certified Quality Manager and a Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineer by trade, and has been health and safety manager for a pulp mill and sawmill, so the assessment speaks the language of the workshop as well as the boardroom and is done on the floor with the people who run the machines.
Critical risks in this sector
What QHSE does here
- Machine safety assessment, guarding review and equipment compliance against AS/NZS 4024 and WorkSafe guidance, with a prioritised remediation list the maintenance team can work from.
- Electrical safety and in-service testing of portable appliances to AS/NZS 3760, and review of an existing test and tag arrangement.
- Lockout and isolation procedures, and advice on specifying and commissioning new machines so the hazards are designed out.
- Quality management systems aligned to ISO 9001, internal audit programmes and internal auditor training, for firms whose customers ask for certification.
- SafePlus assessments and ACC AEP audits, sized so a small firm gets the same rigour without the overhead.
- Critical risk identification: the handful of risks that could kill or maim, written down properly with the controls that matter.
- Root cause analysis training for supervisors and the people who investigate, and independent investigation when one is needed.
- Officer due diligence for owner-operators and directors, evidenced without a filing cabinet of paper nobody reads, and advice on call when a question comes up.
Who it suits
Manufacturers, engineering workshops, fabricators and processors of any size, and especially the owner-operated firms where the owner is the director, the officer and often on the floor as well.
Discuss your organisationFrom first call to close-out
Talk
A conversation about the organisation, its sites, its people and what is worrying it.
Scope
A written scope and a fixed fee wherever possible, with the critical risks or the system elements to be looked at agreed up front.
Look
Time on site with the people doing the work, looking at how it is really done rather than how the paperwork says it is done.
Report
A written report with evidence, findings and prioritised recommendations, presented in person to the leadership team.
Follow through
Help closing the gaps where the organisation wants it, or a plan it runs itself, with QHSE available by phone either way.
Describe the workshop.
Get in touch and describe the organisation.