Rank: New forum user 
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Hi ' what do job adverts mean when they say:
"describe your Ability to use theoretical and practical knowledge, including
working from ‘first principles’ to identify practical, workable
improvements in risk controls"
I want to be sure what they mean, grateful for any examples to explain your answer....
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Rank: Super forum user
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Hi kablo Never seen that in a job advert before. However, I guess it is asking you to set out how you might set about doing a risk assessment, where the mitigation measures are NOT fairly easy to identify in advance. So, may be it's a new task, where there is no authoritative guidance on what to do. Most of time what an H&S professional is doing is mostly drawing on standard solutions to common problems. As example, if the task needs a scaffold, then there are some tried and tested solutions as to how to erect (and dismantle) the scaffold and how it might perform, though you might need to tweak those if for example, the scaffold is likely to be subject to unusual loadings (so you get a Temporary Works Design - which might tell you that e.g extra bracing and ties are required) and what the scaffold should look like when erected - so e.g. guard-rail, mid-rail toe-board and specific requirements for how far a scaffold board of certain thickness can span. But sometimes the H&S professional and others are faced with something entirely new, or at least substantially different and then you might need to assess the risks from "first principles". So, what are the hazards, how will those translate into risks when work is being done and into the future and what precautions you will put into place to mitigate those risks to a level that meets the usual test in the UK of "so far as reasonably practicable"? What will you NOT recommend doing because it isn't reasonably practicable. Possibly the motive behind the question might be to assess how pragmatic you are in terms of finding solutions to problems. P
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I've never come across this in a job advert either. However I recognise this in practice from occasions when some new or experimental thing is being done for the first time as an R&D activity, and precautions need to be established without being able to refer to existing guidance or industry practice.
In that case you go back to the first principles of risk assessment, which include involving all the right people, asking all the important and especially the stupid questions, and working through the hierarchy of controls.
It might sometimes be possible to do some physics or chemistry or engineering calculations to inform the evaluation of risks. Unless you are trained in these you would of course get someone with this expertise to do them.
To which I would add that with something new and experimental being done for the first time I would start with lots of precautions, and as information is gathered in the process of doing the thing (such as what temperature it gets to, what concentration of harmful gases is identified by monitoring you put in place, and qualitative data such as whether it blows up or not), review and consider removing or relaxing some of them.
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Rank: Super forum user
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For me "first principles" means going back to the Act/Regulations and applying them to a practical activity. How many times do you see questions on this site about a specific piece of equipment, asking for example "Is this covered by LOLAR". Often there will be no guidance on this particular item. As an inspector had to do this all the time, would walk into a site and be confronted by equipment i had never seen, so had to go back to 1st principles to see if it was being used safely.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I have never seen this in a job advert, but I have been asked questions like this in interviews. In reality most of the time when we come up with solutions to particular issues, we tend to apply someone else’s solution. This from could be official HSE guidance, or industry guidance or the bloke in the business next door who seems to know what he is talking about! What the employer is asking for is how you would start from scratch with maybe an ACoP and an issue. You need to establish what is required and in particular what is for so far as reasonably practical in THIS situation. Then you do the risk assessment and selecting controls being able to justify why those controls are the best for that situation. This could involve calculation of failure rates or what ever. What they don’t want is a ready made solution.
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