There are many different risk assessments that you may need to implement within your businesses.
Fire Risk Assessment
This risk assessment needs to be carried out by a competent and trained person. This assessment is a full inspection of the workplace and documentation. It should take around 2 hours to carry out the physical inspection and possibly another hour on the documented checks.
Information such as:
- How big are area is
- How old the building is
- What is the construction of the building
- Capacity numbers
- Times and numbers
These are just a few questions that need to be added to the report.
This needs to be carried out on an annual basis. You also need to have dedicated Fire Marshalls to carry out the monthly documented fire checks and to ensure occupants leave the building quickly and in a safe way.
COSHH Risk Assessments (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health)
This risk assessment is for any:
Dust, chemicals, fumes, gas, bacteria that maybe present within the workplace.
For each type you will need a safety data sheet (available from supplier or on their website to download). This document usually comes with 14 sections.
I always suggest pulling the information from the document onto a 1 page sheet as in an emergency you may not have time to read through this comprehensive document and find the relevant information.
Please send me an email for a copy of this free 1 page COSHH risk assessment.
Legionella Risk Assessment
This is a risk assessment for water storage areas. This needs to be carried out by specialist contractors. They will then advise on the regular maintenance to be carried out on site within the water storage areas.
Dynamic Risk Assessment
A dynamic risk assessment is a continuous safety practice that allows workers to quickly identify and analyse risks and hazards ‘on the spot’, remove them, and proceed with work safely. These assessments are performed by regularly observing and analysing high-risk or changing work environments and making quick, yet considered decisions.
Though it is an employer’s responsibility to keep their lone workers safe, employees should also feel empowered to make informed decisions to protect themselves, other employees, and their organizations. Dynamic risk assessments are one of the key practices that employees can use to accomplish this – especially in lone-working, high-risk, or frequently changing environments.
A dynamic risk assessment is sometimes also referred to as a dynamic operational risk assessment.
The Dynamic Risk Assessment Flowchart below outlines the simple steps employees should take to assess risks and hazards and make decisions to mitigate them.
The basic steps include:
- Evaluating the environment, situation, tasks, and persons at risk
- Identifying the risk type, severity, and likelihood of an incident
- Selecting a system of work: a strategy, tactic, or task
- Assessing the system of work for safety
- Considering if the risks are proportional to the benefits
- Proceeding with work or delaying the work until additional safety measures can be introduced.
Qualitative Risk Assessment
Qualitative risk analysis is the process of identifying, analysing and evaluating risks in an organization. Qualitative risk analysis uses subjective judgment to determine the probability of a risk occurring and its impact on an organization. The outcome of this process is a list of risks with their corresponding probabilities and impacts. Project managers often conduct these during the earliest phase of project planning and review them as the project progresses and requirements change. This helps the business find better strategies for addressing risks or deciding if an opportunity is worth pursuing.
Qualitative risk analysis is an approach that analyses the factors that affect an organization and its ability to achieve its goals. It helps to determine the overall risk of a project or program. This analysis involves identifying the risks of a project and assessing their potential impact on mission success. The following are the steps for performing qualitative risk analysis:
- The first step in qualitative risk analysis is identifying the risks that are most important to you. This might be because they’re likely to affect your project or because they’re causing problems right now. Consider creating a list of potential risks and rank them according to their importance or impact on your objectives.
- This involves identifying and prioritizing risks, deciding how to manage each threat and documenting your findings. You can use a risk register to list all the major risks on your project against each risk category in order of importance. This allows you to address the major risks in each category, which can help you save resources. A trained project manager or quality assurance engineer can lead the analysis. This step aims to identify all possible risks and rank them and their impact on the project. You might not be able to eliminate all risks, but you can identify the most important ones and implement measures to mitigate them.
- Prepare a risk report is a document that summarizes your findings, explains the nature of each risk and describes what you plan to do about it. It often includes a risk summary, risk rating, response options, recommendations, and the timeline for implementing responses.
- Risk responses are actions you can take to reduce or eliminate a threat’s causes, probability or impact. Once you identify the risk response plan, try to implement it immediately to determine whether the solution works or could use some changes. Then, you can take further corrective actions and repeat this process until you solve the issue.
- After analysing risks, monitor and control them throughout the project. Because your risk management plan is a living document, update it as new risks or changes occur to ensure your risk management plan is current. Communication is important throughout the process so everyone knows what could go wrong and what they can individually do if the events occur.
Generic Risk Assessment
Generic risk assessments cover common hazards for a task or activity. The idea behind generic risk assessment is to cut down on duplication of effort and paperwork. This type of risk assessment will consider the hazards for an activity in a single assessment.
A generic risk assessment will often be used for similar activities or equipment across different sites, departments or companies. It can act as a risk assessment template, covering the types of hazards and risks usually present for the activity.
It’s important to remember that while the risks from an activity may be common across different sites, changes in the environment can affect risk levels, and even introduce new hazards. It’s probably best to use generic risk assessments as a starting point for a site-specific risk assessment.
Pregnancy Risk Assessment
This assessment needs to be carried out for each and every pregnant member of staff at regular intervals during the pregnancy.
This assessment can be carried out by a manager and will need to take into account:
- Areas of work
- Manual Handling activities
- Stress
- Activities of the business
- Regular breaks
- Time off for medical check ups
There needs to be regular meetings with the pregnant lady and manager just to ensure everything is ok and both parties are happy.
