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Do not ever be fooled into believing that risk assessments are complicated. They are not! They may be time consuming, but there is nothing complicated about them. Trust me! All that is needed is:

someone with a degree of competence in the activity, or situation that is to be assessed
pen and paper to write down the risk assessment
a meeting to share the main findings with those affected by them
time to put in place anything identified as being important to reduce risk
a periodic review of the risk assessment to ensure it is still relevant

Ok, lets put some meat on the bones.

The Management Regulations places an obligation on employers to undertake risk assessments of their working activities.

The risk assessments should include an assessment of how the risks affect not only employees, but anyone that might be affected by the activities.
Employers must ensure that 'suitable and sufficient' control measures are in place to reduce identified risks.
Where the identified risks are significant then the risk assessment should be in writing.
Information relating to the risks and control measures should be shared with employees, who should in turn receive appropriate training, supervision and instruction.

The biggest problems with risk assessments are that:

People are afraid that if they put their name to a written document that they are always personally liable if the brown sticky stuff hits the fan. This is NOT true!!

People do not establish a realistic target for the completion of initial risk assessments, so they either never get done or people feel pressurised because they have run out of the time set. ESTABLISH REALISTIC TIME FRAMES!!

People do not establish a system for monitoring and reviewing risk assessments undertaken, so they become out of date and worthless.

People do the paper exercise, and then stick the paper in a drawer never to see the light of day until the next health and safety inspection or audit. MAKE SURE IDENTIFIED CONTROL MEASURES ARE IMPLEMENTED.

No one beyond the person(s) that undertook the assessment is aware that an assessment has taken place. SHARE THE RISK ASSESSMENTS WITH STAFF!

The employer buys generic risk assessment but these assessments are not modified to make them applicable to the workplace. UNMODIFIED GENERIC RISK ASSESSMENTS ARE A WASTE OF TIME!

LEGISLATION

As you will see later, the Management Regulation leave it to employers to identify the significant risks within their workplace. HOWEVER, there are some specific areas which the regulations make clear should be assessed, if applicable.

Reg. 5: Health and safety arrangements must be in place and where more than four employees are employed, they must be in writing.

Reg.6: Where activities expose employees to adverse health risks or disease, then a system of health surveillance should be implemented.

Reg.7: Competent individuals must be appointed to give health and safety assistance - e.g. safety officers, first aiders, fire wardens, etc

Reg.8: Procedures must be established to deal with serious or imminent danger or danger areas.

Reg.10: Employees must be provided with all relevant information with regard to risks and preventative measures.

Reg.11: There must be a system for sharing and exchanging information and co-ordinating effort where a business shares the same workplace as another business. A health and safety co-ordinator should be employed where there is no controlling employer.

Reg.12: Employers must have systems in place to exchange relevant health and safety information with individual non-employees working in their premises.

Reg.13: Employers must take into consideration the capabilities and training - already received or required - of employees when entrusting them with tasks.

Reg.14: Employees are obligated to use equipment as designed, in a safe manner, as instructed and to inform their employers of any shortcomings in the health and safety system.

Reg.15: Employers must ensure the safety of temporary workers to the same extent as permanent workers.

Reg.16-18: Employers must carry out assessments of the risks to new and expectant mothers. The regulations allow for a suspension from work where the mother works nights, and she has received the appropriate written confirmation from a medical practitioner or registered midwife that to continue night work would be harmful. The employer should be informed in writing that the employee is a new or expectant mother.

Reg.19: Employers must carry out assessments of the risks to young persons before they start work and to implement the necessary control measures.

Regulations Three

Regulation 3 that states that the employer must make sufficient and suitable assessment of all the risks associated with the working activity. Lets examine this practically.

1: First, if you have carried out assessments of risks under other pieces of legislation there is no need to reassess that risk.

2: Decide who is going to carry out the assessments. The assessor should be a competent person i.e. they should have appropriate training, knowledge, experience of the principles of risk assessment and the activities to be assessed. The assessment can be carried out by one individual or a group of individuals (not too large a group if you want to see more results and less debating.)

then....

Make a list of all the working activities undertaken within your business

Identify the hazards involved in that activity

A hazard is something with a potential to cause harm as opposed to a risk which is the likelihood of harm occurring.

Identify the control measures currently in place to reduce the risk

Look to see what is in place to reduce the risk of harm occurring. Do not look at what safety policies and safety manuals say should be happening. Look to see what is actually happening to reduce risk.

Categorise the risk

The categorising of risk is vital. Later you will want to spend your time, money and effort in dealing with those areas that pose the greatest risk. The best way is to identify the hazard and risk, as indicated above, and then assign some value to the risk so you can compare it to other risks.

There are a number of ways to categorise risks but three have been indicated below.

METHOD ONE

Simply look at the hazards and the risks as indicated above and then simply classify each risk as either high, medium or low.

The criticism of this method is that it relies too much on the subjectivity of the assessor. However, it could be argued that whatever method is chosen there will be a degree of subjectivity. This method is as good as any.

METHOD TWO

Use your accident and incident statistics to categorise the risks. These are useful also for identifying uncontrolled risks

Use of this system relies heavily on your reporting systems. Unless you are sure that your systems are effective then use the accident information as an indicator only.

METHOD THREE

Risk rating formulas. This system relies on formula to calculate risk. There are many variations on a theme but the one below is typical:

Likelihood           Severity                 Risk Level

Unlikely = 1        Minor Injury = 1        1-2 = Low
Likely = 2           Major Injury = 2        3-4 = Medium
Very Likely = 3    Fatality = 3              6-9 = High

Now multiply the likelihood by the severity to determine the risk rating

Identify control measures required to reduce risk

Identifying the control measures that are reasonably practicable

Implement control measures

Not all control measures will be capable of being implemented immediately. Draw up a realistic schedule for the implementation of control measures.

Monitor the effectiveness of the control measures

Review risk assessments

Final points to remember

1: If you are carrying out assessments as part of a group:

keep the group relatively small if you want to get the assessments completed before the next millennium;
include managers and workers in the group to get some balance;
include people that know something about the area they are assessing. It makes the process so much easier.

2: If someone else has carried out an assessment that you can use then don't be afraid to use it. Reinventing the wheel can be so boringly tedious. Just ensure the assessment is adapted to meet your needs and is relevant.

3: Set yourself some realistic targets for completing risk assessments. Targets provide A GOAL and that is necessary with risk assessments

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