Risk assessment
What is a risk assessment: risk assessment explained
A risk assessment is a structured examination of a task, place or activity to identify what could cause harm, judge how likely and how serious that harm would be, and decide what control measures are needed before the work goes ahead. It is a decision-making process that produces a record, not a form that produces compliance.
For field service
Know what the job needs before the van rolls
Venta Capture, a product of VentaVid, lets the customer show you the fault first, so the engineer arrives with the right part or does not need to arrive at all.
The hazard and risk distinction is the foundation. A hazard is something with the potential to cause harm (a live conductor, a fragile roof, a solvent). Risk is the chance that the hazard actually harms someone, combined with how bad that harm would be. You control risk. You rarely remove the hazard entirely.
What are the steps in a risk assessment?
The UK Health and Safety Executive sets out five steps, and most national frameworks follow a similar shape.
- Identify the hazards. Walk the job. Talk to the people who do it. Read the near-miss records, not just what is visible.
- Assess the risks. Decide who might be harmed and how, then judge likelihood against severity.
- Control the risks. Work down the hierarchy: eliminate, substitute, engineer out, administrative controls, and only then PPE. PPE last is not a preference, it is the order.
- Record your findings. HSE's guidance is that "if you employ 5 or more people, you must record your significant findings".
- Review. After an incident, after a change to the work, after new equipment, and periodically regardless.
HSE asks the record to capture who might be harmed and how, what you are already doing about it, what further action is needed, who is carrying that action out, and by when. The last two columns are the ones that get left blank, and the ones that turn an assessment into something that changes behaviour.
How is risk actually scored?
The common approach multiplies likelihood by severity, each rated one to five, producing a number that maps to a band: acceptable, tolerable with controls, or unacceptable until reduced. The assessment is then redone against the proposed controls to show residual risk.
Two honest caveats. The numbers are a communication device, not a measurement: two competent assessors often score the same job differently. And a low residual score is not permission to stop thinking. Scoring helps you prioritise. It does not validate weak reasoning.
Risk assessment and method statement: why they travel together
In UK and Irish practice a risk assessment is rarely submitted alone. It is paired with a method statement, and the pair is universally called RAMS.
The division of labour is clean once you see it. The risk assessment answers what could go wrong here and what we will do about it. The method statement answers how the job runs, step by step, with those controls built into the sequence. One is analysis, the other instruction.
Order matters, because the method statement inherits the assessment's controls. The reverse pattern, a template method statement with an assessment retro-fitted to match, is the most common failure in contractor paperwork. UK principal contractors routinely require RAMS before granting site access, which is why the abbreviation is so entrenched even though the pairing is a practice convention rather than one named legal requirement.
When must a risk assessment be written down?
Requirements differ by country and by industry, and it is worth stating that plainly rather than assuming one regime everywhere.
- United Kingdom. Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 employers must assess risks, and HSE's guidance is that those with five or more employees must record the significant findings. Specific regulations (confined spaces, work at height, hazardous substances, asbestos) add duties on top.
- European Union. Framework directive 89/391/EEC requires employers, in EU-OSHA's summary, to "evaluate all the risks to the safety and health of workers, inter alia in the choice of work equipment, the chemical substances or preparations used, and the fitting-out of work places". National implementations set the documentation detail, and they are not identical.
- United States. There is no general federal duty to produce a written risk assessment. OSHA treats hazard identification as recommended practice, describing it as "a proactive, ongoing process to identify and assess such hazards", while specific standards (process safety management, respiratory protection, PPE hazard assessment) impose their own written requirements.
- Australia and New Zealand. The model WHS laws impose a duty to manage risks so far as is reasonably practicable, with a mandatory safe work method statement for high risk construction work.
Assume nothing across borders. A contractor working to UK habits on a European or Australian site can be over-documenting one thing and missing a mandatory record for another at the same time.
Risk assessment explained: a worked example
A team is cleaning inside a storage tank. Hazards: oxygen deficiency, residual chemical vapour, restricted access, lone working. Controls: avoid entry by cleaning from outside if the lance reaches, and if entry is unavoidable, forced ventilation, continuous atmospheric monitoring, an attendant at the entry, rescue equipment ready, and a confined space permit before anyone breaks the seal. Under the UK Confined Spaces Regulations 1997, HSE frames the duties in that same order: avoid entry, follow a safe system of work if entry is unavoidable, and "put in place adequate emergency arrangements before the work start". The rescue plan is a precondition, not an appendix.
Where risk assessments go wrong
- Generic templates. A document that could describe any site describes no site. Assessments written without a site survey land here.
- Written for the file, not the crew. If the people doing the work cannot say what it requires, it has failed regardless of who signed it.
- Skipping the hierarchy. Reaching for PPE because it is cheap and quick, when elimination or engineering was available.
- Never reviewed. Same document, four years, three equipment changes.
- Treated as the whole system. An assessment identifies and decides. Delivering the controls, authorising high-risk steps through a permit to work, and briefing the field engineer who turns up are separate obligations.
