Risk assessment

What is a risk assessment?

A risk assessment is a formal review and consideration of potential hazards, their impacts and the likelihood that together they could cause harm, affecting the health and safety or welfare of people affected by your event.

What is a hazard?

A hazard is anything that has the potential to cause harm in any given circumstances! Take litter as an example, a simple plastic carrier bag left on a country path may seem quite harmless, but there are several ways it could cause harm. It may choke a lamb that tries to eat it, or, if blown into the face of a motorcyclist, it could cause a fatal accident. Just as under certain circumstances and conditions unsightly litter becomes a fatal hazard, almost anything can become a hazard in a similar way. The following list gives a range of examples, and should not be considered complete, but it will steer you towards reviewing and identifying potential hazards to your event:

• dangerous activities – bungee jumping or tree felling
• moving and manipulating heavy or awkward things by hand
• any machinery with or without guards
• any source of contained fire – glass blowing furnace
• accidental fire – discarded cigarette
• vision – dust or chips or other contaminants sprayed at eye level
• hearing – very loud sustained noise such as at pop concerts
• any chemicals in use – toilet bleach
• moving vehicles – especially if the view of the driver is restricted
• building features – slopes, steps, locked gates and doors etc.
• site features – such as icy, slippery paths, flooding
• trip hazards – guy ropes, electrical cables or hosepipes
• animals present – cattle, horses etc.
• contaminants – animal manure or sewage
• electricity – supply and equipment
• overcrowding – facilities unable to cope with crowd surge etc.

What is a risk?

The risk is the likelihood that the identified hazard will cause any harm and a measure of the severity of the harm that it causes. Let us say we are considering a hosepipe, which is a trip hazard. If, when tripping on that carelessly placed hosepipe, the person falls on your extensive collection of jagged broken glass there is a high risk. However, if we moved the hosepipe and the person trips and falls on your huge pile of super soft cushions the risk is dramatically reduced!

In simple terms, will anyone be injured by unsafe rides, or electrocuted by bare electrical wiring, which has not been installed by a professional? Will staff be injured operating equipment on which they are not trained, or where safety guards are missing? Will heavy trucks reversing blindly out of your site injure passers-by, or will passing traffic swerve and crash because they were distracted on a dangerous junction where your model aircraft flew over the hedge and across the road at head height?

The immediate common sense response is, ‘Of course not, I wouldn’t do that’. Unfortunately, without a formal risk assessment and review it is likely that you may not notice that safety guards are missing, or may not ask what is on the other side of the hedge over which you propose to fly model aircraft at head height.

Just as importantly – if there is an accident or injury, you must protect the scene and get treatment for the casualty, then undertake a new and urgent risk assessment of the accident scene. From your records you should be able to prove that in your original assessments you took every care to ensure that the event and site were safe, and the written records of the risk assessments and reviews will help you prove that.

The new emergency review will be to prevent the cause of the accident causing any more problems and that should be recorded as well.

What is likelihood?

The likelihood is the chance of’it’ happening, and has to be estimated by the assessor. For example, an invasion of your event by UFOs piloted by aliens intent on destroying the human race would be fatal in more ways than one. But – the chances of that happening are quite remote. Using our common sense and knowledge of that risk, we will probably decide to ignore the potential hazard of an alien invasion and carry on with the event.

What is impact?

The impact is the scope and depth that will result if an incident happens. In our example above, falling on an extensive collection of jagged broken glass would be fatal or cause grievous injury, so the impact of that is high. However, the impact of falling on a collection of cushions is very low. As they fall on cushions I will have the hosepipe removed, but I won’t close the show until it has been done!

Why make a risk assessment?

There are many reasons why you should perform a risk assessment:

• to plan for safety,
• where possible to design out risk,
• to introduce and promote a safety culture among your staff,
• to implement control measures to remove or reduce hazards, risk and impact to acceptable levels,
• to reject or ban activities that impose too high a risk, and
• to design normal and emergency procedures that will enable staff to safely cope with all eventualities.

The bottom line is that you make a risk assessment to make your event as safe as it can be.

When to make a risk assessment

You must risk assess all of the time! To be sure, make health and safety a primary concern for all event staff by making ‘Health and Safety’ the first and last agenda item for all meetings. You should make a risk assessment:

• at the initial consideration of every action and proposal,
• in the detailed planning of each element, including an assessment of neighbouring and associated factors (for example, though a glass-blowing furnace and display may seem acceptable on its own, you may have a different assessment when you find that it is now expected to be located between the petrol station, the gas works and the hay barn!),
• whenever any of the proposed or expected circumstances change – those changes may be different accommodation, changes in staff, change in size or timing of displays, change in audience numbers, change in weather etc., and
• whenever a new hazard is identified or when there is a near-miss or accident. This assessment will enable you to take measures to ensure that nobody is injured by the hazard identified.

What to risk assess

As events vary so much it is impossible to produce a standard list of the things that need to be risk assesed. The simple answer is to risk assess everything! You know and understand your event and so you know where there may be potential hazards. Do not restrict yourself to jobs and activities that you know are hazardous; even activities that seem totally safe might have hidden risks. For example, a toilet attendant may be handling bleach or other chemicals and so there is a potential hazard that must be assessed and documented: they may be overcome by fumes, may splash some in their eyes, or may leave a bottle where a child could drink it.

For guidance only, I have compiled the following list, but you must remember that you are responsible for the safety of your event, with advice from the authorities you must make sure that you risk assess any potentially hazardous role, procedure or activity. You must risk assess any:

• job type you need to fill, for example people to erect signs, car park stewards, gatekeepers, night security, toilet attendant, or ticket sellers,
• activity you propose to undertake, for example erecting fences, constructing and staffing car park access lanes, mounting public address speakers, or counting cash,
• interface with machinery and equipment, for example cutting and clearing grass on the site, or operating an electrically powered radio base station,
• display, act or attraction, for example folk dancers, parachute displays, model aircraft flying, or a knitting display,
• activity that requires vehicles to move around or near pedestrians, for example carnival processions, roving car park supervisor, traction engine displays, or cash collection using an electric golf cart.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a popular technique that can be of great use thoughout the planning and delivery of an event. It simply requires a group of people to gather together to openly and freely discuss a subject. During discussions, they can suggest options, raise doubts, ask questions, propose alternatives, or suggest improvements; in fact they can say anything that comes to mind.

One member of the group should take on the role of scribe, to record every idea, suggestion, question or other point raised during the session, for later consideration and review. (For accuracy and clarity the scribe must be allowed to slow the pace of the brainstorming session – to allow them to catch up and record everything raised – or ask questions to clarify what has been said, for example,’Sorry – did you say An aardvark}’.)

If a manager presents their findings or proposes plans to a group and then ‘brainstorms’ them, the group can provide a quick and easy sanity check, as you will see in the ‘Checkpoint’ below.

It is vital that your brainstorming group knows that they are free to say anything that comes to mind and that the group lets their ideas flow.

How to risk assess

It is a simple process, but a lot of time, thought, investigation and consideration has to be invested in doing it right. A ‘quick risk assessment’ is a bad risk assessment and that is a hazard in itself!

Ideally to perform risk assessments, you should be familiar with all aspects of the event, so that you know the operating environment. For example, though the event is listed as an open five-a-side rugby tournament, the operating environment becomes important to your risk assessments when you know that the team members and potential audience is comprised of frail elderly people.

As with investigating and planning the whole event, risk assessments should be broken down into manageable areas. Attempting to undertake a risk assessment for the whole event is too complex to comprehend and the assessor(s) are unlikely to have the appropriate information, skills and experience necessary to do it properly.

There are various methods of undertaking a risk assessment and coming to an informed conclusion as to the risk that any given identified hazard poses to health and safety. I use a method that assigns a numerical value to likelihood and impact. For your event, you should take the advice of the experts, but in simple terms I propose the following approach:

• The event manager should assign the risk assessment of elements of the event to appropriately skilled individuals. For example, an engineer might risk assess temporary seating, or you might discuss fire hazards with the local fire service. Note – even though other members of staff may use their expertise to undertake the risk assessment, the assessment and any decisions arising out of them remain the responsibility of the event manager.
• The event manager should delegate risk assessments of each element of the event to appropriately skilled members of staff. For example, if a traffic manager is risk assessing car parks, the traffic manager should discuss plans, risks, threats and problems encountered in previous years. They should visit the car parks and look at the ground and hazards in place, then brief their staff on existing and known hazards and risks. They should consider numbers of vehicles attending, access and exit routes, the signs required and staffing. With all that in mind, they should then list the actual or potential risks and assess them using the tables below.
• When risks are identified, record them, list them, review them with the event manager or other staff, brainstorm diem and add any new risks to the list.
• Review the identified risks with associated elements of the event and inherit or bequeath risks to those elements. For example, where cars and pedestrians use two adjacent gates, the car parking risk assessor, in consideration of vehicular access and dangers, may inherit ‘trip hazards’ from the pedestrian gate risk assessor. Similarly the pedestrian gate risk assessor may inherit ‘car fire’ as a hazard from the associated car parking risk assessor.
• Beware of and consider joint risks. That is an area where an assessment shows little or no risk in isolation. Be aware that surrounding activities outside the scope of the immediate assessment may introduce a new and highly relevant issue in your risk assessment. For example, a go-cart racing event has made provision to hold, store and issue go-cart fuel at the start/finish line. The risk assessment on that fuel storage and issue has indicated that all measures are sensible, adequate and safe and that these activities do not present any unacceptable risks. Now reconsider that assessment in the light of the news that the organiser is going to open the activities with a major fireworks display! Suddenly, the new dimension of fireworks, sparks, explosions and stray rockets puts a whole new light on the storage of our fuel and it has to be reassessed.
• Consider each listed risk against the likelihood and impact of that risk. Where the likelihood is an indication of how likely that risk is to happen and the impact is the extent of damage and or injury that would be caused if it did happen.
• Using the risk assessment scoring chart below, assign a risk value to each hazard you have identified. For example we have a hazard with a likelihood of’moderate’ (scoring 3 on the likelihood row). There is an impact that is ‘severe’ (scoring 8 on the impact column). Taking the two together, and reading across the likelihood row to its intersection with the impact column, we arrive at a risk vale of 24 (3 multiplied by 8).
• Record all hazards and their risk values in a hazard table such as the example below. This is just a list that will hold the results of all of your risk assessments in one place. This method is a suggestion only, but it will record all of the information you need in a convenient format. The ID number relates to areas of responsibility; in this example, a prefix of P for pedestrian hazards, C for car park, G for go-cart fuel etc. The hazard table will form part of the event manager’s manual.
• For each hazard you have identified you must review its score and checking with the risk acceptability table on page 30, decide if you can accept the risk disclosed or if you must take measures to remove the hazard, or reduce the risks using control measures.

Risk assessment scoring chart

Hazard table

ID no.	Hazard detail	Likelihood score	Impact scorescore	Risk value
PI	Pedestrian trip at main gate	1	2	2
C1	Collision in elephant car park	2	4	8
C2	Car fire in elephant car park	2	4	8
Gl	Go cart fuel store fire	3	8	24
Al	Model plane crash in crowd	2	16	32
	Etc.
	Etc.

Risk acceptability table

Control measures

A control measure is an action you take to remove or reduce the risk and impact of a hazard. For example, if the hazard in question is broken glass in the office window, a control measure could be to repair the window where new unbroken glass is not a hazard. An alternative might be to fix steel shutters over the window, because with steel shutters nobody will be able to touch the broken glass so it will not be a hazard. Finally, fencing off the area around the broken window will prevent anybody from getting near to the broken glass, so the hazard is removed.

I have used a few examples below to illustrate the use of this process:

Checking the risk acceptability table above, we find that a score of 8 falls in the ‘Quite tolerable’ range, with a suggested action of implementing control measures. The control measures would include the following:

• Check with the authorities to identify acceptable standards.
• Check with contractors to ensure their tents meet those standards.
• Check with contractors to ensure their staff erecting the tents are properly trained and supervised.
• Check with contractors to ensure that they will contract to safely supply and erect the desired tents on your site to a given and accepted standard.
• Check that tents are being delivered and erected in a safe manner, using safety equipment supplied.
• Invite the authorities to inspect the tents to review safety and compliance with standards.
• Check yourself that the tents appear to meet the safety requirements and standards.
• Make sure the deputy manager with responsibility for tents will inspect the tents supplied and erected before the event and at regular intervals during the event.
• Contract with suppliers to include on-call staff to rectify any problems, such as loose ropes and bolts, etc.

Though the impact could be ‘Severe’, as we use a specialist tent hire company, who are licensed and have trained staff etc., the overall score is only 8 (‘Quite tolerable’). We don’t have to spend any more time making the tents safer than they already are and so we can go ahead with the event.

Checking the risk acceptability table we find that a score of 1 falls in the ‘Acceptable’ range and the suggested action is ‘None’. We don’t have to do anything else, the event can go ahead.

Checking the risk acceptability table we find that a score of 80 falls in the ‘Unacceptable’ range and the suggested action is to remove the hazard or reduce the risk.

To remove the hazard we might have to take huge steps, such as to erect barriers and man them with marshals for the entire route, introduce vehicle inspections to ensure vehicles are properly maintained, insist that drivers achieved a certain level of skill by a licensing system etc. That is beyond the means of the rally club and they could not do it in the time scale available anyway. As it stands the event cannot go ahead.