Dear Learners

Every company has a responsibility to ensure workplaces are safe and employees, contractors and members of the public are protected from potential harm. Using risk assessments allow employers to effectively identify hazards, assess the likelihood and level of the risks they pose, and put control measures in place to reduce or, where possible, completely eliminate risks.

As an employer, you have a legal responsibility to create, maintain, and store the Risk Assessments relevant to your business.

Today we are going to talking today about the risk assessment process, steps of risk assessment, and control measures regarding risk ratings



  Risk assessment is a process to eliminate the hazard and reduce the risk to an acceptable level or      method where you

(Identify hazards and risk factors that have the potential to cause harm (hazard identification -

(Analyze and evaluate the risk associated with that hazard (risk analysis, and risk evaluation -

Determine appropriate ways to eliminate the hazard, or control the risk when the hazard -

 (cannot be eliminated (risk control  

A risk assessment is a thorough look at your workplace to identify those things, situations, processes, etc. that may cause harm, particularly to people. After identification is made, you analyze and evaluate how likely and severe the risk is. When this determination is made, you can next, decide what measures should be in place to effectively eliminate or control the harm from happening.

Download your free Risk Assessment Template

The HSE Culture "Occupational health and safety - Hazard identification and elimination and risk assessment and control" uses the following terms 

Risk assessment – the overall process of hazard identification, risk analysis, and risk evaluation.

Hazard identification – the process of finding, listing, and characterizing hazards.

Risk analysis – a process for comprehending the nature of hazards and determining the level of risk.

         Notes

 Risk analysis provides a basis for risk evaluation and decisions about risk control -

 Information can include current and historical data, theoretical analysis, informed opinions, and -

the concerns of stakeholders   

 Risk analysis includes risk estimation -

Risk evaluation – the process of comparing an estimated risk against given risk criteria to determine the significance of the risk

Risk control – actions in implementing risk evaluation decisions.

Note: Risk control can involve monitoring, re-evaluation, and compliance with decisions



Risk assessments are very important as they form an integral part of an occupational health and safety management plan. They help to


Create awareness of hazards and risks.

Identify who may be at risk (e.g., employees, cleaners, visitors, contractors, the public, etc.

Determine whether a control program is required for a particular hazard.

Determine if existing control measures are adequate or if more should be done.

Prevent injuries or illnesses, especially when done at the design or planning stage.

Prioritize hazards and control measures.

Meet legal requirements where applicable.

can prevent personal injuries in your health.

 Reduce the cost by preventing accident to occur it's very important, because as.

we know, whenever, you have an accident you have to spend some costs

Hazard

A hazard you may know is something with the potential to cause harm, as well as the risk is the likelihood of this hazard to cause harm




the Risk Assessment usually  is 5 steps of the process 

- List all tasks, what you'll be doing, what is this task about, and how you will break this task 
down into small parts 

- Identify who might be at risk and identify all the risk related to each every step that you decide to break down into small parts 

- Then you are estimating the risk, basically you are giving this rating, you multiply the likelihood, and the consequence and you are giving risk rating, by using the risk matrix

Note

The risk matrix is a matrix that is used during risk assessment to define the level of risk by considering the category of probability or likelihood against the category of consequence severity. This is a simple mechanism to increase the visibility of risks and assist management decision making





- Evaluate these risks ratings

Note 

, It means you are coming to the situation and then you have numbers risks rating with you, okay, then by looking at those risk rating and the numbers, and then you are going to ask yourself that is this enough for me to perform this activity safely, without exposing my self and others to related risks, if you answer with yes it's okay fine to proceed performed activity, if not, you have to do more action by put in place some mitigation & protection measures to reduce the risk rating into an acceptable level, so make your task as safe as possible

The risk rating for individual hazards can then be classified as follows

1-4

 This is the usual rating you would expect and in the majority of cases is the normal condition using the correct control measures, but an accident or incident could still happen.

                                   5-10                                       

 Record the finding of your assessment and introduce additional control measures to improve the Risk rating. Certain activities will be out of your control so every effort should be exercised when carrying out such activities with medium risk     

                                   11-25                                       

 Stop immediately/do not start an activity and seek further advice 

    

 Record your findings 

Note 

 You can use any format you want, and it depends on your company documentations, of course, you have to use a presentable format, usually use Microsoft word or Microsoft Excel to form your Risk Assessment and record my findings,

 Review your finding and auditing the Risk Assessments 

Note 

This is an important part of the Risk Assessment process, maybe you are going to make significant changes to workplace processes or design, Whenever new machinery, substances or procedures are introduced or whenever there is an injury or incident as a result of hazard, so you need to break down again your task into small parts to see you have done this misjudgment may be, it is all about your reviewing, and you know making it a dynamic Risk Assessment, we have a generic Risk Assessment, but  a dynamic let you review it you know  as per let say the conditions....what are my conditions require, and as per these conditions I would like to review them from time to time, changing risk rating and evaluating them like ...A PDCA cycle as a continuous process okay

There may be many reasons a risk assessment is needed, including

Before new processes or activities are introduced

Before changes are introduced to existing processes or activities, including when products, machinery, tools, equipment change or new information concerning harm becomes available

When hazards are identified


The aim of the risk assessment process is to evaluate hazards, then remove that hazard or minimize the level of its risk by adding control measures, as necessary. By doing so, you have created a safer and healthier workplace.


The goal is to try to answer the following question

?What can happen and under what circumstances

?What are the possible consequences 

How likely are the possible consequences to occur?

Is the risk-controlled effectively, or is further action required?

Note 

One important thing is that the Risk Assessment should be done by a competent team, this competent team should or can be consist of machinery operators, workshop manager, one person from the HSE department, one person let say from shop flor, and any other competent person, all these people should come together, breaking down the task, identify the relating risks,  give risks ratings, evaluate  and then record findings...and reviewing when required, 

that is all about Risk Assessment, Thank you very much to listen to me, if you have any advises, we will be very happy to listen from you 

Happy day

HSE Culture 

Download your free Risk Assessment Template



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