5 compliance traps quietly costing SA factories millions — from outdated risk assessments to untested emergency plans. Practical fixes from a SHE practitioner. Compliance failures rarely announce themselves. They don't show up as a red flag on a Monday morning — they hide in the everyday routines of a factory floor, in filing cabinets, in habits that "have always been done this way." Then an inspector arrives, an incident happens, or an audit digs deeper than usual, and the true cost of those small gaps becomes very real: fines, shutdowns, legal exposure, and sometimes an injured worker who didn't have to be. After 13+ years working across construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and municipal sites, I keep seeing the same five traps catch South African factories off guard. None of them are exotic. All of them are preventable. Here's what to watch for — and what to do about it. Trap #1: Risk Assessments That Live in a Filing Cabinet A risk assessment isn't ...