Every workplace requires equipment to function. This equipment may include desks, chairs, and staff amenities, as well as tools if specific work needs to be done, where those tools themselves may be stereotypical hammers, drills, saws and others, or more specialised tools suck as tablets, sensors, or testing electronics. Other workplaces may use plant including machinery, equipment, vehicles or other appliances to accomplish tasks, such as using a scissor lift for elevated work, a forklift to manage the stocking of a warehouse, or a tug to move heavy vehicles in a parking yard. Other workplaces and work processes require fixed machinery to complete specific operations, like lathes to carve materials, presses to form metals, mills to finish and machine precision parts, and cranes to lift heavy loads. Work can be complex, and tools, machinery, and plant are used to address and manage the complexity of those tasks.
Powered plant like trucks, forklifts, loaders, and vehicles were responsible for the largest proportion for fatal injuries in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. Self-propelled machinery is useful when repeated, sustained, and directed forces are needed - it is much more efficient to dredge earth using a machine than it is with a team of men with shovels. However, these machines require servicing to ensure their continued operation, inspection to proactively identify hazards and points of potential harm, and their operators must be appropriately trained as well as undertake knowledge review to ensure their ongoing competency. Powered and self-propelled plant must be managed and maintained to ensure its ongoing performance, safety, and safe performance.
Examples of fixed plant are presses, lathes, mills, conveyor belts, stackers, vacuum-sealers, metal forming apparatus, and fixed or roof-mounted cranes. These machines might not move between job sites and so may be exposed to a narrower range of operational strains and loads, but they must still be operated by trained or appropriately experienced staff, be serviced to ensure appropriate function, and regularly inspected for proactive maintenance. This plant may include process machinery or equipment such as reaction vessels, process piping, and accumulators in the case of chemical manufacture or brewing, may include electrical hazards, and may expose workers to chemical risks. Often, in cases of powered and fixed plant that needs to be inspected and repaired, a specialist engineer may be required to audit and document the findings of the inspection and provide instruction as to next steps.
Besides mobile machinery like dozers and cranes, handheld and bench-mounted power tools such as drills, saws, blades, and grinders that are used regularly either across job sites or in single areas should be inspected for safety, wear, and potential harm. Even where tools are used for the same tasks, on a reliable basis, and are not exposed to a broad variety of strains and load, mechanical fatigue through operation may increase the likelihood of an adverse event arising. Where service schedules are provided for plant, they should be followed, or developed where no service schedules are available for consultation. While it may not be practicable to service a static desk or an office chair, which also constitute workplace equipment, it is necessary to inspect and, where appropriate, repair or replace that equipment where its quality, wear, or performance may expose a worker to risk.
Each workplace is different, with different demands, methods of business, and is staffed by people whose capacities, needs, and risk profiles are different. Managing ergonomic, environmental, and occupational health and safety challenges requires a business to examine and engage with the ecosystem of factors that give rise to risk, and how that risk may affect people. Each workplace is different and so sometimes the same problem will require different solutions. This applies to workers as well - every person is different and so may require different support, supervision, or resources to perform comfortably and sustainably. Under Work Health and Safety law, consultation with the workforce, the control of risk as far as is reasonably practicable, and the provision of information, training, instruction and support to the worker by the workplace, is essential to meet obligations to provide workers with a workplace that is as free of risk as far is reasonably practicable.
In our capacity as consultants, Atlas Physio will explore and scope the business and its needs, examining how exposures, risks, and processes contribute to the hazard ecosystem, best inform the design and arrangement of procedural, policy-based, and practical risk controls. Our solutions are tailored to the needs of those with whom we work, implemented in a simple, sustainable, and supportive fashion, designed to be robust and resilient, and to support the ongoing life of the business as well as the sustainable wellbeing of the workers who undertake the day to day activities of work.
At Atlas Physio, we provide reporting, structured control, and ongoing management of risk onsite, on the road, and wherever work is done. We are open seven days a week, and are happy to offer a brief complimentary discussion to explore the needs of your business and your workers if you are an employer, and your needs if you are a worker. Reach out today to arrange a discussion and take the first step toward managing risk and working safely, supported by expertise that is practical, reliable, and designed to deliver lasting results.