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Posted By Teresa Green
I'm getting told by a number of employees at various levels that risk assessments with quantitative scoring are now frowned upon. Some people even claiming that it has to do with CDM 2007. Whilst I was aware that one of the aims is to get rid of unnecessary bureaucracy I hadn't picked this up.
Has anyone else come across this and what is the issue with them?
Teresa
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Posted By Raymond Rapp
Teresa
I have not seen or heard this viewpoint officially, but it has been mooted for some time that quantitative risk assessments are a waste of effort. I prefer the qualitative RA, at least people can understand what is being written. I have reviewed countless RAs that were a complete load of nonsense, probably cut and pasted by some engineer or designer.
Personally, I think most RAs are of little value and I would much rather see just a SSoW. The notion that you must risk assess almost everything is becoming very tedious. Most RAs are generic by nature and thus are virtually useless. It is akin to 'paper safety' replacing real safety.
I know many safety practitioners will not agree with me, at least publicly, but it had to be said.
Ray
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Posted By Kate Graham The issue is that you spend more time fiddling about with the calculations - which are usually of very dubious value anyway - than concentrating on what to do about the risks. The HSE published revised guidance on risk assessment a while back: http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/examples.htmKate
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Posted By Frank Newman
I'm with Ray and Kate on this. Unless you are talking "mean-time-between-failures" or similar, a calculated risk, quantitative, is not worth the wear and tear on your four-banger.
Just assume Murphy's law and compare the frequency of exposure and the probable injury level.
But don't forget that a million to one chance will do it for you every time. (T Pratchett)
Merv
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Posted By Harold Gbinije
Finally someone is bold enough to talk about it, I had running battles about this with my colleagues at work that qualitative is much better over quantitative, because you can ascribe any figure to your parameters and come up with a score that suits what you want, but in qualitative you are able to look at the hazard critically and make a decision base on likelihood of occurrence, people at risk, type of incident/accident that may occur and the frequency without giving numbers to them...
A mid point is to combine both but do the qualitative assessment first and give numbers after.
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Posted By ddraigice
I see less and less of these types of RA fortunately but I recall a debate on this forum regarding work at height where someone suggested that it was OK to work on a roof for (example quoted) 6 minutes without precautions because the risk is x amount less than if you are working on there for x hours.
These kinds of RA miss the point that the risk that needs to be controlled (in this case) is the fall - which is the same risk is you are there for 6 minutes or 6 hours.
HSE's guidance on most industry hazards has been to identify the risk and control it - assigning numbers to a risk is pointless as HSW says you must do whats RP.
The issue has arisen with HSE inspectors as a result of the CDM regs as this is the message they have been given wrt design risk assessments in particular. Unfortunately, it's something that HSE itself helped to create.
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Posted By Rakesh Maharaj
A rather interesting debate. I am led by end user in terms of the approach taken simply because they need to have confidence in the tools they use.
In my experience, numerically minded folk such as engineers often find the qualitative approach too cumbersome because parameters created by 'high', 'medium' and 'low' are unclear. Moreover, leveraging upon a qualitative result to secure investment to implement 'engineering' type risk control measures has proven ineffective.
Lets not forget that process safety related risk assessments are predominantly quantitative!
On the other hand, qualitative risk assessment works well in a large proportion of business sectors where the overall risk profile is tolerable.
I echo the sentiment expressed by others, RA is about facilitating a decision being made about risk and less about getting bogged down in the detail.
Regards
R
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Posted By Tabs
I assign a numeric value to a qualitative statement which then simply allows me to set a response ...
"Unlikely" x "Severe" = ?
Unlikely (1) x Severe (5) = (5) Low, Tolerable
"Very Likely" x "No Injury" = ?
Very Likely (5) x No Injury (1) = (5) Low
Not perfect I know - but it means I don't have to be there to explain the various options if I tell them 1-5 = Low, 6-15 = Medium, etc.
I like others to do the risk assessment, personally I don't need numbers, I have done this long enough to appreciate the subtleties - but that is not true for all the people that need to assess their tasks.
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Posted By John Caney
One of the things you have ask yourself is, when a HSE Inspector asks you (as one did to one of my colleagues recently) how you arrived at your 'Low', 'Moderate' or 'High' qualitative assessments without quantitative evidence, what your answer will be. They do like 'numbers' and 'evidence', and quite rightly will demand that you demonstrate how you came to your conclusions.
In the case in point an improvement notice was served because the risk assessment was deemed inadequate by the inspector through lack of (quantitative) evidence.
Of course, there are more ways than one to kill this particular cat, it's just about deciding on the one that (a) everyone understands, especially the people doing the job in question (b) keeps them safe, and (c) gives you the least sleepless nights!
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Posted By Frank Newman
Refer your inspector to OHSAS 18001 where there is a table on priorities.
Off the top of my head (as usual) exposure is estimated as "occasional", "frequent", "daily", "continual"
Danger level is defined as "light injury", "moderate injury", "serious injury", "fatality"
Graphing exposure against danger gives an estimate of risk.
So, occasional risk of light injury is low priority. Continual or frequent risk of serious or fatal injury is highest priority. (work must be stopped until additional control measures have been implemented)
Risk assessments and ssow should reflect the above estimations. (which are qualitative)
The bloke working on a sloping roof without edge protection is in continual risk of a serious or fatal accident. 6 minutes or six hours. It doesn't matter. Stop it.
About six years ago a tornado blew down our chimney and ripped off tiles. The roofers came wearing sport shoes, climbed up on the roof and laid out the protective sheets. No protection. When it happened again last year the first thing they did was to slam up portable edge-protection. Ruined my daffodils.
Progress.
Merv
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Posted By Philip McAleenan
On a thread last year I made the following observations which I believe are pertinent to this discussion:
It is often posted on this site that written risk assessments are required where there are significant risks. In reality the regulations require that an employer record the significant findings of an assessment, which is a different matter entirely.
A finding is a conclusion arrived at after examining of the facts of the situation.
For it to be significant it must have an important influence or effect on the proposed activity or operation.
By way of example, an assessment of a work operation that shows all the necessary controls to be in place must conclude, “work operation safe to proceed”.
Alternatively, where essential controls have yet to be identified or implemented the conclusion must be “work operation not safe to proceed”.
Both of these are significant findings, the former permitting the continuation of the work operation, the latter prohibiting it, and by extension requiring that the operative/manager do more before he can give the go-ahead.
It is up to the individual how much more they wish to write into their record of findings, but it would be preferable if time and energy were devoted to developing and implementing the necessary control mechanisms, and writing safe working procedures if these are required than writing volumes of risk assessments.
Note too that the requirement is to make finding of fact. This negates the necessity of preparing one of the many elaborate risk matrices that preponderate, as these are neither facts nor a means of determining the significance of a finding of fact.
Regards, Philip
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Posted By Marti Martin
No wonder us new kids get confused!
Marti
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Posted By DaveW
I started off, ten years ago, performing purely qualitative Risk Assessments as per the HSE Guidance and templates at that time.
I then found however, that some company's were consistently requesting quantative Risk Assessment as a matter of individual Company Policy and subsequent to interpretation of the legislative requirements and their Company requirements.
For that reason alone; I began compiling quantative assessments.
These days; I generally compile qualitative assessments though if specific request is made for a quantative assessment, I will discuss this issue with the person making the request and then, if neccessary, I will provide them with a quantitative assessment.
As far as I'm aware, the HSE templates are not quantitative, they are qualitative.
The purpose of an assessment is to identify risk in order that risk can be minimised, not in order to "rate" risk.
The minimisation of risk might be more effectively addressed in many instances not by the "rating" of risk but by identifying and attempting to eliminate risk as the ideal.
To say that a score of ten might be unacceptable and that a score of four might be acceptable may be too subjective an analysis when a score of zero is what we are all attempting to achieve as that ideal.
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Posted By Andy Brazier
Quantitative assessments and matrices (I consider them to be semi-quantitative) definitely have their place. The trouble with purely qualitative assessments it can be difficult to prioritise actions. Consultants can be particularly bad at this, listing 10's of recommendations without an explanation of which are necessary and which are nice to have.
One approach I sometimes take is to rank my recommendations. This has two scales.
1. The effort required to implement.
2. The impact on risk
Cheap and simple improvements should be made even if they have relatively little impact on risk. More difficult ones are worth considering as part of bigger long term plans, but the impact on risk has to be high to describe them as immediately necessary.
Unfortunately many risk assessments are 'engineered' in a way to get the job done. Quantification and matrices can make this even more likely where a particular score has to be achieved (i.e. engineer it so the score is achieved).
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Posted By Bob Thompson CMIOSH
I personally agree with Raymond, the ultimate purpose of a risk assesment is to develope safe working practices, relevent to the level of risk.
which ever mode or method you use to arrive at that safe system of work is merely an aid to an educated guess. so long as the system asks three basic questions How bad, Who too, how often in relation to each identified hazard the I don't think it makes any difference.
Personally i use a qualitative method as it more readily lends itself to common sense,and is usually easier for the masses to understand which is also a requirement of the regs
I take the stance that we are looking for a Reasonable attempt to find a practical solution. As quoted by our local HSE inspector.
Regards Bob
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Posted By ddraigice
The response by the HSE inspector could be explained in two ways:
1. He made a mistake
2. The result of the RA did not go far enough in reducing the risk as low as reasonably practicable in his view. He may therefore have asked for a justification of the assessment in order to persuade rather than just enforce his will.
However, they're not infallible and he may have just been wrong.
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Posted By Darren J Fraser
If you look at the examples on the HSE website, you will see that there is a distinct lack of a scoring system. It is a simple, basic tool that IMHO, works as well as something that looks as though it was designed by a mathematician.
I personally do not think it matters which system is used, just so long as
1. It can be understood and used by everyone
2. All the hazards and risks have been identified
3. All existing control measures are clear and concise
4. Any future actions are documented, with a name and completion date assigned.
I am sure that some of my fellow safety practitioners will disagree with this simplified approach, but if it works why complicate the issue.
Anyway, the 5 Steps to Risk Assessment, only states it must be recorded, it does not state how or in what format, therefore I believe that an Inspector that states a risk assessment is insufficient due to the lack of scoring is in fact incorrect, as they are saying that their own examples are wrong.
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Posted By DaveW
If a HSE Inspector told you that an assessment was insufficient due to "lack of scoring" then I suspect that he was expressing a personal opinion and not the opinion of The HSE.
If the "insufficiency" was attributed to other factors however, then he may well have been correct.
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Posted By ddraigice
Quoting from HSE doc reducing risks protecting people (affectionately known as r2p2), the results of a risk assessment can be expressed qualitiatively or quantitatively.
Where a decision on the proportionality of the control measures taken requires info on the risks, then quant. is needed. e.g. crowd safety, safety of plant and operations for large industrial processes etc.
R2P2 goes into some detail about the pitfalls associated with quant. RA, including avoiding the trap that an absence of evidence of risk is evidence of absence of risk.
So using the example I quoted above wrt work at height, there is no point in working out whether someone will be at greater risk because they are only working there for x minutes compared to someone working at the same location for hours and attributing numbers to it - the risk is the same.
The same goes for other risks for which there is copious amounts of guidance on. A quant RA can be done but its a bit pointless.
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Posted By Alan Hoskins
It isn't so much 'how long' but rather 'how often' I think.
The more times we undertake a task (for whatever length of time) the higher the risk of something going wrong if proper control measures are not in place.
Alan
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Posted By Pete48
Horses for courses.
The two processes are entirely different and serve different needs.
I have long thought that a risk assessment that uses a simple 1,2,3 matrix cannot and never should have been called quantitative (or quantified?) risk assessment. It is a form of qualitative assessment and nothing more. It may have benefits in helping to prioritise if you are faced with many actions after you complete the data gathering for your assessments. However, I would argue that the use of such matrices is unneccessarily complex for the common workplace level use. What many call risk assessment is really a workplace safety audit that checks to identify and confirm that expected risk controls are known and that mgmt systems ensure as best they can that they will be applied.
On the other side of the street. How about using qualitative risk assessment to rebuild Buncefield Oil Terminal. That would save us millions and maybe reduce the price of motor spirit. We could do it on this forum, we have enough people with opinions and views from a wide span of experience, some who have hands on experience in petro chems. So we will be involving the workforce and some professionals to lead it.
Yeh, lets put 25 tanks in there, they should just about fill the area, of course we we will build to latest standards, competent staff, on-going audits and we have only had one accident here in the last 40 years. Low risk, obvious isn't it?
What? You wouldn't feel safe if it was done that way, especially if you lived next door, really? Maybe this is where proper QRA and other specialised methods really belong and not at the stage when the terminal has been built and being operated, which is where we started with qualitative assessment, I think.
As you can tell, I consider QRA to be a formalised, specialist methodology that, like all systems, has its faults. However, it is abundantly clear that it requires skilled and experienced people to use it effectively, often in teams of professional people. These thread often amply demonstrate the problems that can occur if it is used in a format dumbed down to make it acceptable in the general workplace.
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Posted By Dan dan
I prefer the high medium low regime
easy for the man on the ground to understand and complete where necessary.
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Posted By Tom Doyle Quantitative, qualitative, semi-quantitative, are terms that get thrown around regularly in the risk assessment world. I think Peter48 has the right idea. The idea as far as I know revolves around identifying hazards and assessing the severity of potential harm and the probability of that harm occurring. One of the problems that I regularly see is people trying to use a simplified approach to evaluate complex systems. I think the most important part of risk assessment is choosing a system that can be used to evaluate the most complex hazardous situation in your workplace. The same system should be able to handle the simple assessments. A well structured system will allow for complex risk evaluations but make the process equally efficient for both complex and simple situations. The key to success is consistency in the application of the factors contributing to risk and risk mitigation. Use whatever system suits your needs but use it consistently for all hazards. Kindest regards, Tom Doyle Industrial Safety Integration Office: 519-848-6235 Mobile: 519-993-2654 E-mail tj.doyle@industrialsafetyintegration.comhttp://www.industrialsafetyintegration.com/
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Posted By J Knight
Hi Folks,
Agree with Pete48, most so called quantitative RA systems are actually qualitative, but using a numerical index allows two things; rankings and a before and after comparison. The main reason I use numbers is because we have IOSH MS as a standard for our line managers, and that has numbers in it.
To follow on from Philip's point about significant findings. I had this same argument with a fire service following on from our first inspection under the RR(FS)O. They said we hadn't done a risk assessment (as we didn't use PAS76 or whatever its called), and that we had to show them our RA. I argued, successfully, that we had done a risk assessment (using HTM84 as a standard) and that furthermore we didn't have to show it to them, only the significant findings, and that we had already done that. I won that one, but it is exactly the same as with MHSW RAs, the purpose is to identify the necessary steps needed to ensure compliance and discharge of duties, the methodology is not prescribed, and neither is the form of the record,
John
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Posted By Tom Doyle
Quantitative, qualitative, semi-quantitative, are terms that get thrown around regularly in the risk assessment world. I think Peter48 has the right idea. The idea as far as I know revolves around identifying hazards and assessing the severity of potential harm and the probability of that harm occurring. One of the problems that I regularly see is people trying to use a simplified approach to evaluate complex systems.
I think the most important part of risk assessment is choosing a system that can be used to evaluate the most complex hazardous situation in your workplace. The same system should be able to handle the simple assessments. A well structured system will allow for complex risk evaluations but make the process equally efficient for both complex and simple situations.
For machinery ISO 14121-1999, formerly EN 1050, provides the following guidance.
“Risk assessment relies on judgemental decisions. These decisions shall be supported by qualitative methods complemented, as far as possible, by quantitative methods. Quantitative methods are particularly appropriate when the foreseeable severity and extent of harm are high.”
The key to success is consistency in the application of the factors contributing to risk and risk mitigation. Use whatever system suits your needs but use it consistently for all hazards.
Cheers,
Tom Doyle
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