Support

Complete a Risk Assessment Plan

manageradmin Last updated 26 April 2026

A Risk Assessment Plan is your formal record of the hazards in your workplace, how risky each one is, and what you’re doing about them. The platform supports three types of plan:

  • General Risk Assessment (this article)
  • Sexual Harassment Prevention Plan (see the dedicated article)
  • Psychosocial Hazards Risk Assessment Plan (see the dedicated article)

Each is a separate document, with its own form fields and finalised output, so you can produce them independently as your organisation needs.

Start a new general risk assessment

  1. Sidebar then WHS.
  2. Open the risk assessments view.
  3. Click to start a new plan and choose General.

The plan opens in draft. You build it up section by section, save as you go, and finalise it once it’s complete.

Add hazards to the register

Most of the work in a risk assessment is the hazard register itself. For each hazard you identify:

  • Description. What the hazard is.
  • Category. A short label to group similar hazards (e.g. Manual handling, Slip/trip, Chemical).
  • Likelihood. A rating from 1 (rare) to 5 (almost certain).
  • Consequence. A rating from 1 (insignificant) to 5 (catastrophic).
  • Risk rating. Auto-calculated as Likelihood × Consequence:
    • Low (1 to 3), Medium (4 to 7), High (8 to 14), Critical (15 and above)
  • Existing controls. What’s already in place to manage this hazard.
  • Additional controls. What more needs to happen, who’s doing it, and by when.
  • Responsible person. Who owns the additional controls.
  • Target date. Deadline for the additional controls.
  • Review date. When this hazard’s controls should be re-reviewed.

Add as many hazards as the assessment requires. The register is sortable by risk rating so the most serious hazards bubble to the top.

Save as you go

Risk assessments support draft saves. Build the register over multiple sittings if you need to (you almost always will, for anything bigger than a small office). Nothing is locked until you finalise.

Finalise the plan

When you’re satisfied the assessment is complete:

  1. Click to finalise.
  2. The platform generates a finalised HTML document with your organisation header, the assessment metadata (status, finalised date, review date, owner, finalised by, legislation reference), and the full hazard register table with risk ratings colour-coded.
  3. The document is stored against the assessment record. You can download it, share it with team leads, or attach it to compliance audits.

Reviewing and updating

Each hazard has its own review date. Use the review date to set yourself a recurring reminder (the platform’s compliance calendar surfaces these for you). When you review:

  • Confirm the hazard still exists (or mark it removed).
  • Confirm the controls are still in place and effective.
  • Adjust likelihood and consequence if anything’s changed.
  • Add new hazards if you’ve identified them.

For substantial changes (new processes, new sites, restructure), it’s often cleaner to start a new plan and supersede the old one rather than keep editing.

A note on advice

A Risk Assessment Plan is a documentation tool. It helps you record what you’ve found and what you’ve decided to do. It does not tell you whether your assessment is legally adequate under the WHS Act or your industry regulator. For complex or high-risk work environments, have a qualified WHS advisor review your plan before you rely on it for compliance.