Industrial safety

Eng A. Ornan (EAO) provides industrial and processes safety engineering consultants service

Risk assessments – 

As part of managing the health and safety of your business you must control the risks in your workplace. To do this you need to think about what might cause harm to people or process and decide whether you are taking reasonable steps to prevent that harm. This is known as risk assessment and it is something you are required by law to carry out.  

A risk assessment is not about creating huge amounts of paperwork , but rather about identifying sensible measures to control the risks in your workplace.

You are probably already taking steps to protect your employees, but your risk assessment will help you decide whether you have covered all you need to.

Think about how accidents could happen and concentrate on real risks – those that are most likely and which will cause the most harm. For some risks, other regulations require particular control measures. Your assessment can help you identify where you need to look at certain risks and these particular control measures in more detail. These control measures do not have to be assessed separately but can be considered as part of, or an extension of, your overall risk assessment.

Risk assessment process include:

• Identify the hazards
• Decide who/what might be harmed and how
• Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions
• Record your significant findings
• Review your assessment and update if necessary

Main methods for risk assessment:

• Preliminary hazard analysis.
• HAZOP – Hazards & Operability
• Fault tree analysis, and Event tree analysis. 
• MPWC – Most probable worst case.
• QRA – Quantitative risk analysis