How to do Risk Assessments ?

Health and Safety in the Events Industry

With the growing awareness of health and safety issues, knowing how to do risk assessments is more important than ever before. This is especially true in the events industry, where professionals are constantly facing new challenges in new locations with new staff and infrastructure.

Risk assessments are one way of protecting your staff from injury, protecting your organization from prosecution, and fulfilling your legal and moral obligations.

What is a risk assessment? 

A risk assessment is a way of evaluating potential hazards in the work place, and prioritizing the action you take to control them. 

Learning how to do a risk assessment? 

Methods vary but generally a risk assessment should comprise of the following stages:

Step 1: List the tasks that are your responsibility 

Identify anything in the workplace that you manage. These include locations, people, equipment and activities.

Step 2: Identify ‘hazards’ (anything that can cause harm) 

List these based on what you can see, what your staff say, and where accidents have occurred in the past.

Step 3: Estimate the risk (the likelihood that  it will cause harm) 

So assuming that you have completed stages 1 and 2 you now need to examine each hazard on your list and estimate the risk.

Give a score of between 1 and 3 to the following (1=low; 2=medium; 3=high):

• How likely is it that the hazard will cause harm?
• How serious are the consequences?

Step 4: Evaluate the risk 

To evaluate the risk you need to make the following calculation:

Risk = likelihood of injury x consequences of that injury

You can then compare you findings to the following table:

Risk assessment techniques can vary and larger more complicated tables are used in some organizations.

Step 5: Record the findings 

It is good practice to record you risk assessment on a risk assessment form. The form can take many shapes and formats. What’s important is that you record all the information. Recording risk assessments in this way is a legal requirement in the UK if you employ five or more people.

Step 6: Review the findings 

Risk assessments should be reviewed regularly in order that the risks remain low. Where risk are high, control measures should be implemented to reduce these risks.

Disclaimer 

This article is an introduction to carrying out risk assessments. It is intended to be a source of information and not a guide or an authority. The author recommends that professional advice is sought from a recognize health and safety body such as IOSH. 

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