Risk Assessment

The risk side of the blog is the hazard, the risk, and the method that connects the two. The hazard is the source of potential harm; the risk is the likelihood that the harm happens, multiplied by the severity; and the method is the five steps that the UK law expects and the ISO system uses. The articles here are the working method: the definition that sticks, the example that holds, the matrix that scores, and the mistake that fails the review.

The four articles, in the order to read them: the hazard vs risk is the difference, held apart, with the examples and the side-by-side. The what is a hazard is the definition and the six families, with the walkover that finds them. The what is risk is the formula, the 5×5 matrix, and the ALARP band. And the practical workplace risk assessment is the five steps on a real workplace, with the point-of-work version and the mistakes that fail the review. The COSHH risk assessment is the chemical version, per substance.

Every article on this page is written the same way: the working method first, the example that holds, and the mistake that fails the review. The professional version — the sign-off, the audit, the training — runs through umer-hse.pro.

The legal test is Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999: the assessment must be suitable and sufficient. In practice that means three things. It found the real hazards — not the ones from the template. It looked at the real people — the new, the old, the injured, the contractor. And it produced the real controls — the ones that are actually in place, in a hierarchy that starts with elimination and ends with PPE. The recording duty kicks in at five or more employees, and the record is not the form — it is the evidence that the walk happened and the decisions were made.

The five-step method is the skeleton, and the content is what makes it legal. Step one: the hazards — the plant, the substance, the task, the place, the people. Step two: who might be harmed, and how. Step three: the existing controls, honestly rated. Step four: the new controls, in the hierarchy — eliminate, substitute, engineer, administer, PPE last. Step five: the record, the review date, and the trigger list. The assessment that fails the "suitable and sufficient" test is almost always the one where every risk is low, every control is a sentence from the template, and the review date is a year from a date nobody remembers.

The articles in this category take the method out of the form and into the workplace: the walk, the rating, the control that actually works, and the review that is a decision and not a date. The tool for doing the rating — the five-by-five with the bands explained — is in the Toolkit, and the printable templates are in the Resources. For the audit of the risk assessment system itself, the professional work runs through umer-hse.pro.

• Suitable and sufficient: the real hazards, the real people, the real controls
• The hierarchy starts at elimination and ends at the PPE — an assessment that starts at the PPE has skipped the ladder
• The recording duty kicks in at five or more employees
• The review is a decision list — the change, the incident, the finding — not an anniversary

Hazard vs Risk: the Quick Difference

The hazard is the thing that can do the harm — the live cable, the open edge, the chemical. The risk is the possibility that it does, scored on the likelihood against the severity. The full explanation, the definition, and the ten examples are in the article: Hazard vs Risk: the Difference, the 5 Steps and the Template. The tool that scores the risk is in the Toolkit, and the printable template is in the Resources.