The Control of Artificial Optical Radiation at Work Regulations 2010 are your starting point for safety issues. There is a short guidance document from the  HSE(8 pages long).

You need to manage the laser source, just like anything else through a risk assessment. Like any risk assessment it starts with identifying the hazardous nature of the laser you  are using. You need to know the frequency (ie the colour Note some lasers are invisible to the naked eye  that is very scarry)., the power somebody has to calculate the attenuation of the beam ie how far it can travel  before it stops being dangerous. The laser should come with a hazards rating-Classes 1 to 5.  

You will need to train your operators on how to us it safely. They need to understand things like a laser only produces a “beam” in sci-fi films or if it shines through some sort of mist. Therefore when they switch it on they should not expect a beam to appear and they should not go looking down the laser to try and find it!

They need to select  appropriate eye protection which is sufficient to protect the eye from that particular laser but not so dark as to render the user effectively blind.

I have dealt with companies that supply laser products but who have no real understanding of what they are selling: they simply act as importers of equipment manufactured in China, where safety standards are somewhat lower than here, and they often fail to supply useful safety information.

It might be worth hiring a specialist laser safety consultant to help with this.    

Presumably you want no change to the steel you are removing the concrete from in which case do you truly believe high intensity energy creating heat will not affect the underlying substrate?

Without knoweldge of why/how the concrete is attaching to the steel bit limited on other potential solutions - mild acid rinse / ultra sonics / "wet" wipe down.

Alternativley what about a release coating on the steel before the concrete has chance to attach negating heavy duty cleaning?

Years ago when I was involved in medical research, they were looking at lasers that were tuned to a particular substrate, meaning most of the energy was being absorbed by your target material and the there was minimum collateral damage. I can see that working in controlled clinical conditions but not so sure about concrete on metal.

If you spend enough money,  you can get a really safe system for example the system could include a low powered spotting laser which will tell you where the main beam will go, and it can also operate an interlock that stops the main laser working if the beam is more than a few centimetres from the target. But you need to  find this out if this is the case. You could end up buying a cheap but generic death ray with no safety features!         

Edited by user 16 September 2022 14:57:31(UTC)  | Reason: missing w rds