by Natalie Edwards

Worried about what WorkSafe might say about your welding workshop? Worry no more! We've created this blog to make it easy to know what you need to do to comply with WorkSafe regulations...

 

Your Responsibilities

Let's start by making it clear what your responsibilities are as a PCBU (person conducting a business or undertaking):

  • To make sure, as much as possible, workers and those around them are kept healthy and safe while at work.
  • To eliminate or minimise health and safety risks where possible.
  • To regularly monitor workplace conditions and health of workers to ensure a healthy work environment that is not causing preventable illness or injury.

In other words, it's your duty to provide a healthy work environment that includes safety equipment, rules, regulations and training. It is the employee's responsibility to follow the rules. However it is also your job to monitor them and make sure they are following the rules, and take appropriate measures if they are not.

The danger of welding fumes

Keeping it simple, there are 4 things you need to do to be compliant and ensure the health and safety of your workers:

1. Provide adequate/appropriate ventilation throughout the workshop to remove hazardous fumes.

2. Provide adequate/appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for workers - we've written a few blogs on this:
3. Provide adequate training on the importance of, and how to use PPE provided.

4. Perform regular health and safety checks to ensure rules and regulations are being followed, ventilation and PPE is in good working order, workers are healthy, and there are no obvious hazards around the workshop that need dealing with.