Risks & Hazards
It’s important to take a moment to distinguish the difference linguistically between the words “risk” and “hazard”. Whilst similar in use in everyday life, when talking in terms of health and safety, and specifically risk assessment, they each have a distinct meaning. A hazard is classed as an activity or object that has the potential to cause damage or harm to a group, or an individual. Some examples of hazards in the workplace may include boxes placed in a walkway, a nail protruding from a board laying on the floor, or a low hanging scaffold pole. Note that these hazards all have the potential to cause harm.
A risk is similarly classified as the resulting harm or injury that stems from the improper procedure in relation to a hazard. The risks resulting from the hazards just mentioned would include someone tripping and falling over the boxes, someone stepping on the nail protruding from the board and injuring themselves, or someone hitting their head on the low hanging scaffold pole. Every hazard has an associated risk, and in some instances more than one risk per hazard.
Risk Assessments
A risk assessment is a document/report that highlights the potential risks and hazards to health, in relation to specific tasks that are due to be carried out. Within a risk assessment document, every individual task to be undertaken must be assessed, with relevant prevention information stated. Under the “Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999” it is the responsibility of an employer to provide adequate risk assessment documents to ensure the safety of their employees. The HSE website states that the minimum information to be included within a risk assessment document is:
■ “Who might be harmed and how
■ what you're already doing to control the risks
■ what further action you need to take to control the risks
■ who needs to carry out the action
■ when the action is needed by”
In terms of prevention, and effectively ensuring a safe working environment, it’s important to note that someone is always responsible for incidents that do occur on site. By this, it is meant that almost all hazards within the workplace are left by the last operative that attended to them. In the scenarios we mentioned previously, an operative chose to leave the boxes in a walkway, the scaffolder was negligent in leaving a pole low hanging, and an operative chose to leave a board with a nail sticking out of it on the floor. Resulting injuries that occur from these hazards are caused by the operatives that create the hazards, and so to complete a full circle, it is the responsibility of those operatives to ensure they are not endangering those around them, by not leaving hazards for others to injure themselves on.
Hazards on site
Whilst working on site or in the workshop there are a multitude of observable potential hazards, all of which can lead to injury or fatality if not treated with respect and proper procedure. It’s important to not become complacent, or to risk one's own safety or the safety of those around oneself at any point. Here is an extensive breakdown of potential hazards on site, with pertinent methods of incident prevention in accordance with commonplace risk assessments.