Hi, after comments please. I am in the process of changing our company risk assessments to a 5 x 5 grid format....because this format suits our needs and our employees can relate to the way that the information is displayed. Our current risk assessments have been put in place by an external consultant, prior to me arriving at the company. He states that they are as per BS31100. The calculation used on such is P x S x PR / CM = T, where: P = probablility S= severity PR = person at risk CM = control measure T = risk score These have been posted in our facility and speaking to our employees they do not understand them. I am making sure that the situation changes, as the keep it simple methodology and involve the employees in the assessment seems to have been ignored. I would welcome any comments on the BS31100 risk assessment format if anyone has any experience of it. Thanks

Don't remember any calculations in 31100 (unless I've missed something in the guidance docs)! This would appear to be an interpretation. It's interesting in one way. I would have thought that Severity already takes account of the people who could be affected. I would also have thought that the Control Measures would have subtracted from the headline risk rather that acted as a divisor. I have to say that the "old" way of calculating the headline risk in one set of columns and then doing a similar calculation taking account of the Control Measures in another was a far more transparent way of doing things! I agree with Rob that numbers are fine for management (provided that they actually understand them - e.g. do they know that the risk enumeration should be logarithmic rather than arithmetic?) but can be meaningless for the workers - they just want the systems to be workable! ....one the other hand, maybe I am becoming a dinosaur!

Thanks for your comments gents. My approach is to keep it simple and i fully agree with the use of numbers issue. I have shown our staff a RA similar to that of the HSE template (no numbers) but for some reason our staff including my fellow senior managers ( non H&S )are happier and more comfortable with the matrix type, as they like the idea of the headline/residual risk comparison. I was just concerned about the over complication of the BS31100 template previously imposed on us, and thought i may be missing something. Thanks again for you help.

bobf, If you have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_Matrix, you will see that there has been research already undertaken on risk matrix by Tony Cox. He argues that these do not work as they "experience several problematic mathematical features making it harder to assess risks".