Posted By Adrian Watson
Dear All,

Is carrying out a risk assessment for making a cup of tea ridiculous? I have been to premises where inappropriately sited instantaneous tea boilers produced a serious risk of scalding, furthermore I have seen tea making facilities sited so that the person is has to walk up and down stairs and through busy corridors, thereby increasing the risk of scalding.

I'm with Phillip regarding carrying out and recording the significant findings of risk assessments. No where do the regulations mention significant risks; they mention carrying out risk assessments and recording the significant findings and any persons especially at risk, where 5 or more person are employed. The significant findings may be "that there is no risk" and this would need to be recorded, under the relevant conditions.

I do not agree with Phillip's statement that risk assessments must conclude with either, “work operation safe to proceed” or “work operation not safe to proceed”.

Regards Adrian Watson

Posted By G Levers
Evening All,

I don’t often contribute to this chat show, preferring to lurk in the background, however on this occasion….

Firstly a number of contributors have stated that “No where do the regulations mention significant risks;” Without getting anybody’s back up, I would like to refer you all to paragraphs 18 & 28 of the ACOP which do mention the phrase “significant risk”

18 A risk assessment should:
(a) ensure the significant risks and hazards are addressed;
(e)........The employer or self-employed person should always adopt a structured approach to risk assessment to ensure all significant risks or hazards are addressed.

28 ………Where employers have already carried out assessments under other regulations, they need not repeat those assessments as long as they remain valid; but they do need to ensure that they cover all significant risks.

Secondly, I disagree with the significant findings being “work operation safe to proceed” or “work operation not safe to proceed”. paragraph 25 of the ACOP states....

“25 The significant findings should include:
(a) a record of the preventive and protective measures in place to control the risks;”

Finally on the tea making issue the ACOP states that… “insignificant risks can usually be ignored, as can risks arising from routine activities associated with life in general, unless the work activity compounds or significantly alters those risks.”

IMO tea making would be a routine activity associated with life in general and would only need risk assessing (catering establishments aside) in exceptional circumstances. For example, if the kettle is on a gas stove in a room adjacent to a process that might create an explosive atmosphere.

Having taken the time to dust off my copy of L21 and refer to those sentences I’m going to award myself 2 points on my CPD!! ;-)

Anyway, back to lurking.
Regards, Gary

Posted By Chris Jerman
Interesting arguments, folks. However, there are some differences in our uses of language here; just to start with. There is, in fact, no such thing as a risk assessment and, of course, you can't 'spot' a risk.

We assess hazards and their potential consequences (usually at their reasonably foreseeable worst) and then assess likelihood (in general, the effectiveness of existing controls for preventing it from going wrong). Giving both of these a value of some sort allows us to come up with a risk value (often described as High, Med or Low) If you read many of the postings and indeed 5 Steps, you will see the 'Assess hazards and risks' So hazard x risk = risk? I think not. Risk is simply a numerical tool that, for the sake of priority, allows us to distinguish between the important and the not so important. RISK is not a physical thing it's a concept. The axis in a matrix such as that used in assessment are independent variables.

Sure, in simple terms everything could be assigned a risk value, but fortunately the law allows us to negate the insignificant ie that to which we cannot assign significance.

Now, to the original post - with which I wholeheartedly agree. The difficulty here is that many people set out assessing without a plan. Often performing a risk assessment only to find out that the task has insignificant level of risk. The danger for the 'backside coverers' who WILL assess everything is that if you have assessments for the insignificant, where do you stop? Blinking, swallowing, breathing? The key is to start assessing at the clearly significant end of your task listing (see previous posts - you cannot start without a list of tasks that might need assessing or else you are simply guessing). As you work through the significant TASKS (not risks) there will be a point where you start to approach insignificant findings. Now, as there is no legal definition of risk assessment, your task listing containing a sample of those tasks that you deem insignificant in respect of needing an assessment remain as proof that you at least considered these activities on paper. Your evidence that you have not been negligent in failing to assess everything is proven by the fact that you looked systematically and that you did assess the significant tasks and recorded significant findings. We seem to spend more time arguing over the insignificant than the significant.

If you can prove that you have all of the significant findings recorded, then by exception everything else wasn't worth bothering with. How will you prove that you HAVE all of your significant findings? We really have to get back to the spirit rather than simply the letter of the law. All of these myths surrounding risk assessment are largely of our making - therefore they are also ours to dispel.

I agree that risk assessment findings are not binary; OK to proceed - not ok to proceed. That only gives you two risk regions. Low risk = we do this fairly well and we're not prepared to put much more effort, if any, into it. High risk, this needs to be at the center of our radar, we MAY need to consider not doing it even temporarily, or at least have a very good reason for doing it if we have to. Medium risk, well it could be worse, but it could perhaps be better - this needs to be next on the radar depending on the composition of the maths that got it to medium. Forgive me but where in any of the regs does it say that you cannot perform a task that has been rated as high risk?

Chris Jerman
CFIOSH

Posted By Adrian Watson
Chris,

With great respect, your statement that there is no such thing as a risk assessment is utterly wrong. I agree you cannot spot a risk; you identify a hazard, i.e. an event or situation with the potential to cause injury, ill health or damage. However, we evaluate the risk, i.e. the possibility of specified harm(s) resulting from the hazard occurring. One on the greatest problems is the confusion over hazard and risk, plus the conflation of risk being possibility times consequences. Risk is not the product of "a" times "b"; risk is the probability of the consequence of a hazardous event occurring. Furthermore risk is not a numerical tool, risk itself is a concept that can be expressed subjectively, ranked or expressed mathematically as odds or as a probability.

Additionally the law does not allow us to negate the insignificant it requires us to assess the risk, in many cases before carrying out the work e.g. COSHH. If I am wrong and I am sometimes, please refer to me to the letter of the law, not the ACoP or HSE's guidance, where it does so!

The law (MHSWR 1999 Reg 3(1)) requires that:

"Every employer shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of—

(a)the risks to the health and safety of his employees to which they are exposed whilst they are at work; and

(b)the risks to the health and safety of persons not in his employment arising out of or in connection with the conduct by him of his undertaking

for the purpose of identifying the measures he needs to take to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed upon him by or under the relevant statutory provisions ..."

The use of the word "shall" makes that an absolute requirement. The only matter of degree is over what is suitable and sufficient.

HSWR 1999 Reg 3(6) requires that "Where the employer employs five or more employees, he shall record—

(a)the significant findings of the assessment; and
(b)any group of his employees identified by it as being especially at risk."

The requirement to record the significant findings is also not optional, where the employer employs five or more persons.

I agree that we need to get back to the basics, which is to prevent injury and ill health. I also agree that this involves having a methodical and systematic approach and that risk assessment is a tool, that requires a thought process to determine what can go wrong, how often will it go wrong, what are the consequences to the exposed groups, and what can we do to prevent, reduce or mitigate the consequences.

However, lets not fool ourselves into believing that Courts, HSE and La's do not have hindsight bias whenever an injury has occurred. They know that an injury has occurred so you have to prove that the risk of injury could not be prevented and was being properly controlled; furthermore how do you know this is the case until or unless the hazard has been risk assessed. A paradox or what?

Regards Adrian Watson

Posted By Pete48
QED to misuse a mathematical term :)
As Chris so eloquently describes, our old mate "risk assessment" is a complex subject.
Little wonder then that the results obtained using the simplified approaches and the problems manifested are currently stifling the positive perception of H&S.
I cannot be as certain as Chris that this situation and misreading of the useful aspects of "risk assessment" was never envisaged or intended by the legislators; but I do know that it isn't what I expected from the duty to assess.
I still cannot accept that it is necessary to record everything or use the pseudo-science of risk matrices to determine priorities. If the hazard is obvious, the controls are simple, the estimation of "risk" is low and there is an argument that this is common sense (the things we can expect others to know and be obvious to most) why do I record that? For me the ACOP is clear about such matters.
For an accident to occur there must be a failure somewhere so my liability would be self evident regardless of whether I have a written record or not. By demonstrating that the controls that were actually in place and the systems to manage that task were according to best practice, what do I get prosecuted for? Failing to have a record of something obvious to all?
Now, if I had not recorded any assessments or made any records of how I determined and ensured any of my safe designs and safe working practices, different ball park.

Posted By Dave Wilson
All this 'technical stuff' although I know it does mt head in!!

Its simple

1 What do you have / do which can cause harm?
2 Who / what can be harmed?
3 What is the 'LIKELY' chance of this happening with no control measures in place
4 What have you done to prevent this (SFARP)?
5 Is this enough?
6 What more do you have to do
7 Implement
8 Review on a regular basis

Posted By Adrian Watson
Dave,

Oh that it would be so simple.

1 What do you have / do which can cause harm?
2 Who / what can be harmed?
3 What is the 'LIKELY' chance of this happening with no control measures in place
4 What have you done to prevent this (SFARP)?
5 Is this enough?
6 What more do you have to do
7 Implement
8 Review on a regular basis


I am with you until point 3. I suggest the following amendments:

4. What is the ideal solution;
5. What am I doing;
6. How do I close the gap as far as it is possible;
7. Implement;
8. Review.

The difficulty with your methodology is that it allows satifying!

Regards Adrian Watson

P.S. I did not mix up probability and possibility; the court of appeal defines risk as the possibility of harm occurring - As stated for clarity possibility may be subjective (likelihood), ranked, or odds (1:80 chance) or probability (0.1).

P.P.S. Assess it, address it and record what's necessary!

Posted By Dave Wilson
OOPs point 4