Posted By christopher mudd i work for a construction company and I have been tasked with coming up with a risk assessment for lone working. The type of work being carried out is mainly minor repairs to residents dwellings where trades men would normally work alone, sometimes while the resident is at home, sometimes not. Does anybody have a policy/procedure/risk assessment that I could look at that may help me to develop a procedure for my employer. Thank you

Posted By Chris Jerman The trick here, Chris, is to back up a stage. Before we get into lone working risk assessments, it's essential that you have a structured approach to assessing the risk arising from the activity that these people are doing. Following the IOSH methodolgy for risk assessment, you will arrive at a prediction of what would be the worst that may reasonably befall the individual and an assessment of how likely they are to find themselves in such a postion that some degree of harm is possble ie an incident. From this you will need to assess whether being alone is an issue, ie should injury actually occur, would being alone either be a problem initially (in raising the alarm) or would the consequences actually be worsened by their solitude. Remember that having other people in the vicinity probably won't prevent the accident in the frst place, it's the aftermath that's the issue. So in short, don't do lone worker RISK assessments, do activity risk assessments, then do 'so what' assessments based on the potential consequence of being alone. As an aside, it's worth remembering that the issue is lone working and not alone working. Facing violence and agression in, say, a patient's home, is to be very much 'lone' but not 'alone' if you see my point.