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Introduction to Risk Assessment
The Five Steps Guide to Risk Assessment
The Risk is a common word we hear in our routine day-to-day work. It is used by motivational speakers very often that we must take a risk in order to achieve something or our goals, however, when we talk about risk in the context of health and safety at the workplace, we must be careful, we must estimate and evaluate risk in order to stay safe and healthy. In different countries, it is a legal requirement for employers with regards to health and safety, fire safety. Poor risk controls and or lack of risk controls always lead to serious events resulting in the loss.
What is Risk?
The risk could be defined as computation of likelihood that could cause event leading to harm and or consequences (e.g. physical injury, illness, property damage).
What is Risk Assessment, Estimation, and Evaluation?
When estimating and or evaluating risk at workplace there are a number of methods available for estimation and evaluation. This process of estimation and or evaluation is called risk assessment. Risk assessment is a process to carefully examine your workplace for hazards, risks and to determine control measures keeping in view existing control measures. Risk assessment is legal binding on employers as well.
When carrying risk assessment at the workplace, five steps of risk assessment from Health and Safety Executive is the simple and popular method to follow for risk assessment at any workplace, which will lead to good health and safety culture and minimize losses at the workplace.
What are the key steps to carry out Risk Assessment?
- Identify the hazards
- Decide who might be harmed and how
- Evaluate the risk and decide on precautions
- Record your significant findings
- Review your risk assessment and update if necessary
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Risk assessment is a legal duty placed on employers under the law in order to manage health and safety effectively and to prevent incidents proactively by taking actions on foreseeable risks. Risk assessment should be carried out by competent individuals generally as team approach including line manager, HSE specialist, technical expert, job supervisor, worker representative/worker safety representative and or worker involved in the work processes. Risk assessment should be reviewed time to time generally on the annual basis, however, in case of a significant event, changes in the work methods and or processes, changes in the technology, changes in the procedures and or legal requirements, enforcement actions from regulatory authorities, changes in the key management may lead to the review of risk assessment. Many organizations review their risk assessment document time-to-time e.g. weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly and or bi-annually.
What can PAK Safety Solutions do for you?
We, at PAK Safety Solutions, offer a range of HSE services including training, consultancy & advisory services, risk assessment is one of them. Our expert consultants/advisors can help you to manage your workplace health and safety risk due to their diversified experienced education in HSE. We can conduct the risk assessment using various methods e.g. probability matrix etc. We have offered such services to our clients in past for their industrial setups.