Working in plant and equipment rooms

Working in plant and equipment rooms presents risks to staff as they may contain heavy, noisy and dangerous machinery. So use our document to highlight the risks and some options to manage them.

Managing the risks

To help you identify the hazards associated with work in these areas and the appropriate ways of controlling them, use our example Risk Assessment - Working in Plant and Equipment Rooms. It covers the generic risks associated with work in this type of location and suggests control measures to reduce such risks to an acceptable level.

You should ensure that your document only addresses “significant” hazards, i.e. any that could, and more importantly are likely to, cause an accident or injury.

Note. This risk assessment only deals with the generic risks associated with some of the more common locations of plant and equipment. You will need to prepare an assessment that deals with the particular type of plant or equipment room your staff will be working in.

Make your instructions clear

Don’t include activities in your document that simply don’t need to be there. Work to the principle that if there is any chance of your staff being unaware of the safe way of doing something, then you will need to make it clear in your document. Finally, always ensure that any control measures you identify and follow only go so far “as is reasonably practicable”.  

Note. The list of potential hazards is not exhaustive. However, for your risk assessment to be considered suitable and sufficient in the eyes of the law it must accurately reflect the “significant” hazards found in the individual plant or equipment location.