Forms of risk assessments

The purpose of this module is to provide you with an understanding of and insight into basic risk assessment practices.

This module with provide you with the necessary competence to identify hazards and assessing risks.

The aim of this module is to provide you with the necessary information and activities to enable you to:

5.         Analyse basic risk assessment by:

1. Comprehending the forms of risk assessments.
2. Interpreting practical risk assessment.
3. Interpreting practical hazard identification.
4. Interpreting risk measurement.
5. Examining the reporting and recording of risk assessments.
6. Examining preventive and protective measures.

Many people already carry out risk assessments on a day-to-day basis during the course of their work and note changes in working practices.  They recognise substandard working conditions and actions as they develop and take the necessary corrective actions.  Legislation and best practices requires that this process is completed in a systematic manner, is recorded, the results are reliable and the analysis is comprehensive.  Employers will have to undertake a systematic general examination of the work activities and then record the significant finding of the risk assessments conducted.

The risk assessment process must be continuous and not regarded as a one‑off exercise.

While it will be necessary to establish a baseline, the requirements of legislation will not be satisfied by the creation of a single risk assessment report which stands for all time.  

There are essentially three forms of risk assessment which are part of a risk management system and need to be carried out under legislation.  These are (not in order of priority):

1. Baseline risk assessments.
2. Issue based risk assessments.
3. Continuous risk assessments.

Organisations have to assess where they are in terms of risk, identifying the major risks and thereby establishing their priorities and a system for future risk control.  

This baseline risk assessment needs to be comprehensive and may well lead to further, separate, more in‑depth risk assessment studies.  The baseline risk assessment must be periodically reviewed, say every one to two years, to ensure that it is still relevant and accurate.  

Any other studies (practical risk assessment and practical hazard identification discussed below) will need to be incorporated to achieve the “complete picture”.

As circumstances and needs arise, separate risk assessment studies need to be conducted.  These are normally associated with a system for the management of change.  An additional risk assessment needs to be carried out when, for example:

• A new machine is introduced.
• A system of work is changed or operations alter.
• After an accident or a “near‑miss” has occurred.
• As new knowledge comes to light and information is received which may influence the level of risk to employees at the Organisation. An example of this is when the scientific knowledge about the toxicity of a substance changes and previous risk assessment exercises dealing with that substance are invalid.

Continuous risk assessment is the most important and powerful form of risk assessment which must take place continually, as an integral part of day to day management.

It will mainly be conducted by front‑line supervisors and it is essential that formal training is provided to enable this process to be efficient.  Examples of continuous risk assessment include:

• Audits
• General hazard awareness linked to a suggestion scheme.
• Pre‑work assessments using checklists.

In this latter case, the checklists will need to be developed following risk assessment exercises such as those described in baseline and issue based risk assessments above.  

One outcome of the risk assessment process can be the development of a checklist which deals with the critical parts and critical processes, concentrating on the key performance indicators which show the effectiveness of the underlying systems of control.  

Pre-work risk assessments must be conducted daily, by the supervisor and the team from the area of work, in consultation with safety representatives.  Also, as part of good management practice, those same supervisors must undertake Critical Task Analysis and Planned Task Observation, on an ongoing basis. 

In this type of risk assessment, the emphasis is on hazard awareness through hazard identification.  The prioritisation of hazards by thinking about risks is not as important as this will already have been accomplished through the risk based techniques done during baseline and issue based risk assessments.  

In general, a risk assessment involves identifying the hazards present in some work activity or associated with the layout of premises, the construction of machinery and so on.  

This is followed by an evaluation of the extent of the risk involved taking into account those precautions already being taken.  In this context, it is necessary to define some basic concepts such as hazard, risk and severity.

• HAZARD: Something that has the potential to cause HARM. This includes substances, machines, methods of work or other aspects of work organisation;  

• RISK: The LIKELIHOOD that the harm from a particular hazard will occur; (the chance of loss)  

• SEVERITY: The extent of the risk depends on not only the severity of the harm to a person but also the number of people who will be harmed.

Risk therefore reflects both the likelihood that the harm will occur and its severity in terms of the degree of harm and the number of people harmed.