Riskteq and workplace safety

McKay Timber gets on top of workplace safety

McKay Timber are a long-established timber milling and fabrication business with operations in Hobart, Launceston and Hallam (Victoria), manufacturing and supplying finished timber as well as custom-built roof trusses and wall framing to the local and international market. Working with powerful machinery, safety and compliance is paramount for McKay.


Riskteq modules tailored for this project:



Mike Cotton from McKay Timber at one of their three sites.


The Problem

Every McKay site has multiple work centres which manufacture different products in the range, each with machinery requiring different skills and training. For workplace safety and wellbeing of staff, it is critical that only fully trained staff operate equipment.

But to achieve efficient use of labour and to meet demand peaks, McKay need to be able to move staff from work centre to work centre, ensuring only staff who are properly trained in the current Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are assigned to each piece of machinery.

Staff are not necessarily computer-literate, so McKay needed an easy-to-use way to manage workplace safety, skills and competencies, and an efficient way to manage SOPs. But the system also needed to give them control, allow them to ensure staff training was up to date, and able to support the future business growth objectives.


The Solution

McKay chose Riskteq to manage staff skills and competencies, and training on their SOPs. Riskteq’s document version control gives them the ability to know exactly who is trained on the current SOPs and to proactively manage training planning as new SOP versions are introduced.


McKay Timber’s Hobart head office and manufacturing plant.


Staff have found Riskteq easy to learn and use, and it has delivered the depth of function we have needed to be confident in how we are managing skills and competencies, and training for our staff. And it is easy to produce the information we need to integrate into our monthly management reporting packs. Mike Cotton – Finance Manager, McKay Timber


What’s Next

McKay Timber plan to implement Riskteq’s Incident and Hazard Management module, quickly followed by Safety Inspections. Over time, they aim to have a single integrated system to manage all their safety, risk and compliance needs. Finance Manager Mike Cotton says one of the reasons McKay chose Riskteq was the broad range of integrated modules that can be implemented as they are ready to take each next step.