Captain Clyde's Safety Pin #5: Assess Risks!

Today's Safety Sunday tip is: ASSESS RISKS

Risk assessment is a proactive HSE process tool. The more we understand its purpose and the more times we use it, the better we become at learning how to recognize, evaluate, and control hazards and minimize the likelihood of our employees getting hurt, damaging equipment, or possibly harming the environment.

A risk assessment is a thorough look at your worksite, office, yard, facility, and yes, even your home space. This tool helps us determine the severity of the risk and how we should best attack it before it attacks us.

Over the years, I've learned that clear and concise communication is paramount in reducing risk, no matter the size of a job, task, or work scope. In an industry like ours, injury statistics have undoubtedly improved, but we still have severe incidents and, even worst, fatalities. A risk assessment provides us with ways to plan a job more efficiently and lessen the chance of harm coming to our employees.

So, as we continue to explore the use of a risk assessment let's first define "risk." A risk is a measure of the likelihood of an incident or an event that might cause an ill effect to people, plants, and the environment. It's essential to assess the degree of risks as either high, medium, or low. In other words, the probability of which an incident could occur. Risk assessment is all about awareness of events. It's about taking responsibility for job planning and preparations and knowing the steps of all the potential hazards involved. It's an essential part of any job, small or large.

Risk assessment is not just a paper exercise. It's a physical tool for systematically engaging workers to thoroughly analyze all the "what if" scenarios in a job task. The goal is to try to answer the following questions to create a safer and healthier workspace:

• 1.What can happen, and under what circumstances?
• 2.What are the possible consequences?
• 3.How likely are these consequences to occur?
• 4.Is the risk itself controlled as low as reasonably practical (ALARP)?

I have only begun to scratch the surface of a risk assessment's effectiveness, but remember this: if you have the opportunity to anticipate a potential incident and address the adverse impacts, you will be more successful and save yourself from any personal or company loss.

I'm sure you'll be hearing more from me about risk assessment on a future blog. Until then, be anchored to safety and assess risks!