Posted By Andrew W
Finally sense prevails.

I've felt for a while that the whole process was becoming too over complicated and beaurocratic and had lost the purpose of it's original intention.

Andy W

Posted By Jay Joshi
It is explianed in the FAQ's part of the new risk webpage:-

http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/faq.htm#differences

Is HSE’s 5 Steps to risk assessment the only acceptable method?

No. We believe “5 steps to risk assessment” provides a straightforward method, but it’s certainly not the only acceptable way.
A number of alternatives exist. Most follow the same format as that in "Five Steps to Risk Assessment":

1) Identify the hazards
2) Decide who might be harmed and how
3)Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions
4)Record your findings and implement them
5)Review your risk assessment.

Where other methods tend to differ is at the “evaluate the risks” stage. Here, we suggest comparing your control measures with good practice to assess whether more needs to be done.

But, another common and very effective method involves working out a risk level by categorising the likelihood of the harm and the potential severity of harm and then plotting these two risk determining factors against each other in a risk matrix. (Not copied here!)

The risk level determines which risks should be tackled first. As with any other method of risk assessment you should not overcomplicate the process e.g. by having too many categories.

Posted By Andrew W
Yes but don't you feel that it's the overcomplication of catagories thats one of the problems.

It seems like every week someone is in some magazine or other with a newer and more complicated method of carrying out risk assessment. Surely the whole idea of risk assessment is to make people think about the task they are going to perform and how to do it safely.

It shouldn't be a process where a bloke in an office with a degree in advanced assessment fills in a piece of paper that no one understands, reads or cares about. It should be a working document that means something.

Andy W

Posted By Raymond Rapp
For a long time I have thought that most risk assessments achieve very little, indeed, they can often be nothing more than a bureacratic exercise.
Take for example the risk matrix (severity, likelihood), whoever reads or understands these apart from H&S practitioners. Yet, almost every method statement contains these in some form or another at the back.

I thought the original idea of risk assessments was to assess the significant risks. Now it seems all and sundery has to be risk assessed. It's barmy. My real pet hate is generic orientated risk assessments, which adds very little safety control to the actual task. Manual handling is a prime example, and in reality each particular task should be assessed on its own merit.

Regards

Ray

Posted By AJM

I agree also i saw the new guidance Monday, much better.

As for other scoring systems I once saw up to 5 with death being 5 but they had 0 for not likely to happen so death could occur but not very likely and it scored 0, No action necessary pure class.

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
John,

Yes there has been a responce. See:

http://www.iosh.co.uk/in...m?go=news.release&id=301

Posted By Robert K Lewis
I am just so simple that I'm still working out why the 11 page document as announced is 8 pages on download. But I am a silly old pedant.

Bob

Posted By Arran Linton - Smith
John,

I am sure your thoughts are already being reviewed.

Posted By the badger
You make a good point John. It is important to differentiate between carrying out the assessment and recording the significant findings.

However, if risk assessment is, as you say, "a simple common sense approach" (and I agree with you that that is what it is - or at least should be) why do we need to make life difficult for ourselves and others by using the complex terminology of "risk assessment" to describe something so simple. If it is so simple, lets use simple words to describe it so that we do not need to provide special training/instruction etc.

We took a wrong turning back in the late 1980s and early 1990s by introducing the concept of formal risk assessment into our health and safety system. I feel that using the term "risk assessment" was at the root of the problem. It might have been better simply to require employers to identify and then tabulate significant sources of harm and the preventive measures used to reduce the likelihood of people being harmed. Now that would have been "a simple common sense approach"!

Posted By John Murgatroyd
Why bother ?
Nobody READS them, do they ?

Posted By Nigel Hammond
I see in the example risk assessment that goes with the new HSE guidance, (ABC Office) there is no record of evaluating the risk. I find this surprising - given that step 3 of the five steps is entitled 'EVALUATE the risks and decide on precautions'.

All the above comments make good points and I respect what HSE are trying to do. I love simplicity but I do not like 'slapdash' or big gaps - which I fear will be the result of HSE's guidance.

I might get lynched for saying this - judging by the responses so far, but I like risk ratings for the following reasons:

1, I find most people cope well with them as long as you provide training and good plain English guidance. 8 out of 10 people prefer some sort of rating once it is introduced (Not scientific but that's my experience after introducing 3-by-3 risk matrices in two large multisite organisations)

2, If you do not record your risk evaluation, how well would the assessment stand up in court? It's all very well HSE criticizing employers for back covering. Their striving for simplicity may be some comfort regarding possible prosecution. However, I can't see how not recording the thought process that goes into a risk assessment would help when an employer is being sued - up to three years after the injury - when people's memories have evaporated?



One other point, I am not sure that HSE really are offering 5 simple steps. When you read the details, each step is made up of smaller steps. For example, Step 3 includes: evaluating the risk (Which involves thinking about severity and likelihood to lead to a risk level - even if you just think it in your head rather than writing it down), looking at existing precautions and identifying new precautions - that's 5 steps within 1!

Posted By Stephen A
If you record all notible Risks on the Risk Assessment is there not a chance that sometime in the future, should a claim for an Accident come forward, and you supply your RA, that you and your company could be challenged due to 'you being in full knowledge of the Risk and doing nothing to reduce or negate the chance accident', would the argument of Reasonable Practicable be diminished due to your recording and recognising the initial Risk?

Posted By Stephen A
I am raising this only to share experiance, not saying it is right. Just that I have seen incidents of the Insurance Claim Brigade jump for joy when they get a companys robust and thorough RA, and they say "its in black and white, and you did not do enough to remedy the flaw". The Calculator of the Insurance company comes out, and they decide to settle out of court, damage and cost limitation exercise.
I have known H&S managers skimp on detail for such reasons, and again I am not condoning such practise but just giving you another view from Industry.

Posted By snt
The point of Step 3: Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions.

The bone of contention on this thread is the word "evaluate". Risks evaluation involves using matrix to scale them and prioritise them accordingly. Notable tools in this regard are Event Tree Analysis, Risk Matrix. It is the evaluation process through quantifiaction that will allow possible precautions to be taken. Though the New Guidance is simplified, the evaluation process still have to be taken into account. Not all risks can be prevented, but we can mitigate against them or actually abandoning the process if the severity is greater. In the same vein, most risks can be prevented if properly quantified without the guess work. Proper evaluation invloves liaising with professionals.

Posted By Stephen A
Nothing wrong with 'Heated' debate, its good playing Devils advocate.

Posted By Kesp
Well said Ray.

snt the word evaluate here is merely stating that one should make a judgment based upon the existing control measures and what is good practices, preferable using someone who has a good knowledge of the process. There is no need to get Dr Bloggs involved with endless sessions of event tree analysis.

Keep it simple keep it real

Kesp

Posted By Diane Thomason
I'm intrigued by the references to the risk assessment method in the "managing safely" course. I haven't seen this - would somebody be able to outline it?

I agree with Richie that looking at the office example - manual handling, chemicals, VDU workstations and so on are included and some control measures stated but no specific assessments are referred to. This would be fine I'm sure, except that this brief assessment is not "suitable and sufficient" as an assessment under each specific set of regs. Or, if the assessment itself took into account all the specific requirements of each set of regs, the record of the assessment doesn't reflect that.

I and at least one other person I know is going to mention this to the HSE next time we see an inspector. Don't want to discourage them in their efforts to show employers that assessing risks need not be complicated, but the approach used in their examples does not seem to be consistent with some of their enforcement actions.

Posted By Is Kismet
The preview looked nothing like this!!

Posted By J Knight
Hi Diane,

No, the risk in the case you mention would be zero in the IOSH model. What Is Kismet hasn't mentioned though is the fact that the MS model is a two-stage approach; first assess the risk 'as is', then design control measures, and estimate the risk following the introduction of controls. The beauty of this is that it allows an assessment of situations where risk is already controlled, and therefore allows managers to see the worth of continuing to spend money on control measures. For example, 'why do we spend money on fire precautions when we never have fires?' Well, the IOSH approach would say, first assess the risk with no control measures, then repeat the process with controls in the equation; the difference in this rather obvious case is of course huge, but it can be used to similar positive effect in marginal cases as well,

John

Posted By Is Kismet
I perhaps need to elaborate a little on that. In the example given their system states there is 0 risk, not low or similar words, but Zero risk.

How can that be?