Traffic management in the factory: separating people from moving plant

How do you separate people from moving plant in a factory?

Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic), an employer must provide and maintain a working environment that is safe and without risks to health, so far as is reasonably practicable. On a factory floor that means keeping pedestrians and powered mobile plant apart — ideally with permanent physical barriers — and writing it down in a traffic management plan everyone on site has been told about.

Why does pedestrian and plant separation matter so much in manufacturing?

Because the numbers are brutal and the injuries are life-changing. WorkSafe Victoria states that forklifts cause more workplace deaths and injuries than any other piece of equipment, and that more than half of forklift-related fatalities have involved pedestrians. Even a slow-moving forklift can crush, injure or kill a pedestrian (WorkSafe Victoria, reviewed 4 May 2023).

It's also an enforcement priority. In October 2024, WorkSafe Victoria reported an enforceable undertaking estimated at $1,254,708 after two workers were struck by mobile plant in separate incidents — one struck by a reversing dump truck, suffering amputated toes and multiple fractures; the other struck by an excavator after stepping back from a vehicle. WorkSafe's Executive Director of Health and Safety, Sam Jenkin, said "it is simply unacceptable for pedestrians and mobile plant to be operating in the same space" (WorkSafe Victoria, 31 October 2024).

Those were infrastructure sites, not factories. The duty and the physics are identical in a 40-person fabrication shop.

What does the law actually require in Victoria?

Three layers, and it's worth being precise about each.

1. The general duty. Section 21 of the OHS Act 2004 (Vic) requires an employer to provide and maintain, so far as is reasonably practicable, a working environment that is safe and without risks to health — including safe plant and safe systems of work. That duty extends to independent contractors and their employees, including labour hire workers, for matters the employer controls or should control (WorkSafe Victoria).
2. The hierarchy for plant. The Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (Vic) require risk to be eliminated so far as is reasonably practicable. If it can't be, you reduce it by substituting the plant with plant that has a lower level of risk, isolating plant from people, or using engineering controls. Only if risk remains do you fall back on administrative controls — training, supervision, instruction — and PPE (WorkSafe Victoria, reviewed 4 May 2023).
3. Consultation. Employers must consult employees, including contractors, and health and safety representatives (HSRs) when identifying hazards and assessing risks, and HSRs and plant operators should be involved in developing the plan itself (WorkSafe Victoria).

There is no prescribed template or minimum aisle width in the Victorian regulations. What's assessed is whether your controls were reasonably practicable — which is why the written plan and the evidence behind it matter.

What goes into a traffic management plan?

WorkSafe Victoria's guidance for employers using forklifts, and Safe Work Australia's national guidance, converge on the same content:

1. Duties and responsibilities of the people involved.
2. Every hazard identified from mobile plant use at the site.
3. The desired flow of pedestrian and vehicle movements — including the space operators need to safely get in and out of machines.
4. The expected frequency of interaction between vehicles and pedestrians.
5. The safest routes of travel, and traffic flows that remove reversing where possible (for example, one-way routes).
6. Illustrations of the layout: barriers, walkways, crossings, signs.
7. How short-term, mobile and complex situations will be handled.
8. Who reviews it, and what triggers a revision.

Safe Work Australia adds that the plan should be developed by a competent person, tested on site by both the people who wrote it and the people who'll work to it, and made available to workers on site (Safe Work Australia, April 2021).

Which controls actually separate people from plant?

Ranked strongest to weakest. The mistake I see most often is a floor plastered with yellow lines and hi-vis vests, and no barrier anywhere.

Level	What it looks like on the floor	Notes
Isolation (strongest)	Permanent physical barriers, containment fences, guardrails at building entries and exits, overhead walkways, exclusion zones (forklift-only loading bays; pedestrian-only areas), separate entry and exit points for people and vehicles	WorkSafe: separate people and powered mobile plant using a permanent physical barrier where practicable. Barriers can be fixed or movable
Engineering	Reversing cameras and sensors, fixed mirrors, speed-limiting devices, boom gates and proximity-triggered gates, traffic lights, speed humps, forklift-approach warning lights, adequate lighting	Reduces the chance of a collision, but people and plant still share space
Administrative	One-way routes that remove reversing, speed limits, floor markings and coloured zones, signage, pedestrian crossings with barrier gates on forklift routes, safe work procedures, induction and training	Only after higher controls are exhausted
PPE (weakest)	High-visibility clothing for employees and visitors	Last line. It doesn't stop the collision

Sources: WorkSafe Victoria (forklift traffic management plan, reviewed 4 May 2023; metal fabrication traffic management, reviewed 10 May 2023); Safe Work Australia general guide for workplace traffic management (April 2021).

Which areas should always be barriered off?

WorkSafe Victoria's metal fabrication guidance is specific: fixed physical barriers should be used to prevent powered mobile plant from operating near tea rooms, time clocks, dining facilities, amenities and entrances (WorkSafe Victoria, reviewed 10 May 2023).

That list is worth walking with a tape measure. These are exactly the places where people stop concentrating — heading to smoko, clocking on, walking in from the car park — and where a forklift path crossing a doorway is a genuine near-miss generator.

What about truck drivers and delivery contractors?

Visiting drivers are the group most often missed, because they aren't on your induction list and they don't know your floor.

• Provide designated driver safety zones, located so the driver can still observe the load being moved, and a safe means for drivers to transit from the truck to that zone (WorkSafe Victoria).
• Ensure drivers are at a safe distance from trucks and powered mobile plant during loading and unloading.
• Advise everyone at the workplace — employees, contractors, visitors — about the traffic management plan, and cover it in the site induction.
• A contractor or visitor who hasn't been trained in the plan must be accompanied at all times if they need to cross a forklift route or enter a forklift working area (WorkSafe Victoria, reviewed 4 May 2023).

How often should the plan be reviewed?

There's no prescribed interval in the Victorian regulations. WorkSafe Victoria's guidance says the plan should be reviewed regularly to make sure the risk controls remain adequate, and revised whenever there is a change in forklift or pedestrian work practice.

In practice, I treat these as mandatory triggers for a review:

• Any change to the floor layout, racking, or where goods are staged.
• New or different plant — a bigger forklift, a new reach truck, a scissor lift.
• A new shift pattern, a new product line, or a seasonal spike in dispatch volume.
• Any near miss involving a pedestrian and plant, reported or observed.
• A new HSR, or a request from an HSR to look at it.

What I look for when I walk a floor

Ten minutes on a factory floor usually tells you whether traffic management is real or paperwork:

• Do the yellow walkways actually go where people want to go — or do people cut the corner every time?
• Is there a barrier between the pedestrian door and the forklift path, or just a line?
• Can the forklift operator see the crossing point from a stopped position, or is there a racking blind corner?
• Where do truck drivers stand while they're being unloaded? Is that spot marked and protected?
• Do visitors get a hi-vis vest and an escort, or a signature and a wave?
• Ask a supervisor to show you the current traffic management plan. If it takes more than two minutes to find, it isn't being used.

None of that requires a consultant. It does require someone whose job it is to look.

If you'd rather have an experienced safety manager walk your floor with your supervisors, map the plant and pedestrian routes, and leave you with a plan your team will actually use, Ardmor Operations runs site assessments for Victorian manufacturers — book a site assessment.

FAQ

Is a traffic management plan legally required in Victoria? The OHS Act 2004 (Vic) and OHS Regulations 2017 (Vic) require you to identify hazards and eliminate or reduce risk so far as is reasonably practicable — they don't prescribe a document called a "traffic management plan". However, WorkSafe Victoria's guidance for employers using forklifts states that to develop an adequate forklift traffic management plan, employers must identify all forklift hazards and assess and control the risks. A written plan is how most Victorian manufacturers demonstrate they've done that.

Do floor markings and hi-vis count as separating pedestrians from forklifts? They're controls, but they sit at the bottom of the hierarchy. Under the OHS Regulations 2017 (Vic), administrative controls and PPE come after elimination, substitution, isolating plant from people and engineering controls. WorkSafe Victoria's guidance is to separate people and powered mobile plant using a permanent physical barrier where practicable — markings and vests support that, they don't replace it.

Who has to be told about the traffic management plan? Everyone at the workplace, including employees, contractors and visitors, and it should form part of the workplace induction. WorkSafe Victoria's guidance also states that an untrained contractor or visitor who needs to cross a forklift route or enter a forklift working area must be accompanied at all times by someone who has completed that training.

This article is general information for Victorian manufacturers, not legal advice. Last updated: 14 August 2026.