What is Risk Assessment| Definations

Risk Assessment

What is Risk Assessment?

What is Risk Assessment: Risk assessment is the process of identifying potential hazards and analyzing what might happen if the hazard occurs in an Environment. Business impact analysis (BIA) is the process of determining the potential impact of disruptions to critical or time-sensitive business processes.

Risk assessment is a term used to describe a general process or method by which:
Identify hazards and risk factors that may cause injury (hazard identification).
Risk analysis and assessment related to risk (risk analysis and risk assessment)
Determine appropriate measures to eliminate the risk or control the risk if the risk cannot be eliminated (risk management).

Risk assessment is a careful study of workplace elements, conditions, processes, etc. Identifying what can be harmed, especially to people. Once identified, analyze and evaluate the likelihood and severity of the threat. Once the decision is made, you can decide whether to take steps to effectively repair or control the damage.

Example risk assessments

These are typical examples of how other companies deal with risk. You can use it as a guide for reflection:

Some risks for your business
Risk management measures

Risk Identification

To effectively deal with hazards and risks in the workplace, you must first know them. When determining risk, the ISO 31000-2018 standard advises security professionals and stakeholders to consider several factors, including:

Materials and Sources of Risk
Threats and Opportunities
Causes and events
Effects and their effect on the project
Data limits and data integrity
Weaknesses and strengths
Changes in external and internal conditions
New hazard signs.
Time-related information
Stakeholder biases, attitudes, and beliefs

A risk assessment team focuses on these areas and can use a variety of methods to identify hazards in the workplace. One such method is the HAZID (Hazard Identification) study, which provides qualitative and systematic methods for hazard identification.

What is Risk Management

HAZID uses keywords and/or checklists to identify potential hazards, their causes, and consequences. In addition to its qualitative nature, HAZID may also include a qualitative analysis to determine the potential severity of a particular hazard and the likelihood of its occurrence.

Risk assessment teams can use tools such as risk assessment matrices and heat maps to compare and prioritize risks. These tools allow security professionals to add risks to a matrix or map based on the likelihood and severity of potential risks. From there, decision-makers can analyze each risk to determine which risks need to be addressed at a higher level.

Risk Analysis

Based on the information gathered during the risk identification, stakeholders can begin to analyze the risk level of a particular hazard and, among other things, prioritize actions based on existing controls.

Risk analysis includes a detailed analysis of uncertainty, hazards, results, probabilities, events, scenarios, controls, and their effectiveness. Events have many causes and consequences and can affect multiple goals.

Hazards previously identified by HAZID can be included in the initial hazard analysis. In this type of analysis, the evaluator uses existing controls to analyze the current state and additional suggested controls to analyze possible future states.

You can use tools such as risk assessment matrices and heat maps to compare and prioritize risks. These tools allow security professionals to identify or map risks based on the likelihood and severity of potential incidents.

The decision maker can then analyze each risk to determine which risk should be addressed at the highest level. The results of the initial hazard analysis can then be transferred to a more detailed perspective, such as a bow tie risk assessment map, for further review to provide the decision maker with more detailed information.

In terms of finding an acceptable solution to a particular hazard, Protection Level Analysis (PLA) examines whether existing or proposed barriers can achieve an acceptable level of risk. When conducting LOPA, safety experts select the hazards and outcomes for each hazard/impact pair and establish an independent level of protection (IPL).

IPL is a physical barrier to engineering controls, design changes, warning devices, etc., designed to prevent the root cause from having an undesired effect.

Using such a risk analysis approach, safety professionals can consider additional IPLs that can be installed to eliminate certain risks and calculate the impact of their control on the severity and probability of the incident.

Importance of Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is very important as it is an important part of the health and safety management plan. They help:
Be aware of risks and dangers.
Determine who may be at risk (e.g. employees, cleaners, visitors, contractors, public, etc.).
Determine if a control program is required for a particular hazard.
Determine if your current controls are adequate or if you need to do more.
Avoid injury and illness, especially during design or planning.
Prioritize risks and manage countermeasures.
If applicable, comply with legal requirements.

Risk Evolution

As the final step of the risk assessment, the risk assessment asks security professionals to review the results of the risk analysis and compare them to established risk criteria to determine where additional controls are needed and what they might be.

As noted, bowtie risk analysis is a risk assessment technique that has gained popularity in the security industry because it provides a more holistic view of risk and paints a picture of a specific risk event. A bow tie analysis centers around a potential event, where the causes, preventive controls, mitigating controls if it occurs, and the consequences of the event are explored.

The advantage of bow tie analysis is the ability to better visualize a certain dangerous event, how it can happen, its consequences, and how the consequences can be avoided or minimized. However, such analysis usually does not include a risk scoring mechanism and does not reflect the effectiveness of controls.

Regardless of the approach, it must be kept in mind that risk-based decision-making must take into account the broader context and the actual and perceived effects on internal and external stakeholders.

Hazard Identification

In general, the goal is to find and record potential hazards in your workplace. It can be helpful to work in a group and involve people you know and people you don’t know in the work area – that way you have an experienced and fresh perspective to explore. In all cases, the individual or group must be competent to carry out the assessment and have a good knowledge of the assessed risk, the likelihood of occurrence, and the safeguards associated with the risk or risk

Ensure that all hazards are identified;

View all aspects of the project.
This includes irregular activities such as repairs, maintenance or cleaning.
Accident Information / Hazardous Conditions / View Information Immediately
People who work outside the home, or at home, elsewhere, including drivers, remote workers, at customers, and so on
Look at how the work is organized or done (including the experience of the people doing the work, the systems used, etc.).
Consider foreseeable exceptional circumstances (e.g. potential impact on risk management processes that may not be present in an emergency, power outage, etc.).
Find out if the product, machine, or equipment can be intentionally or unintentionally altered (for example, a removable shield).
Investigate all phases of the life cycle.
Check for dangers to visitors or the public.
Think of groups of people with different levels of risk, such as young or inexperienced employees, people with disabilities, or new or expectant mothers.

Risk Communication

A fourth element, equally important to effective risk management, permeates all stages of the risk assessment process: risk communication.

Security professionals must take care of the risks identified during the assessment for all stakeholders, so that everyone has a comprehensive understanding of the risks that exist and how they can be avoided or minimized to achieve the goals of the organization.

By implementing the steps described in this article, all stakeholders will gain a comprehensive understanding of the hazards and risks present in facilities and processes, the effects of existing hazards, and how they can be avoided or minimized for the health and safety of workers to improve. . .

What is Risk Assessment| Definations

Risk Assessment