Guidance: When do I need to review a risk assessment and how?

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Many managers dread reviewing risk assessments. The last thing any manager needs for Christmas is the thought of a hefty pile of paperwork waiting for them at the end of the year. However, knowing the law can provide a few solutions to make the process more productive.

Risk assessment articles:

1. A short guide to hazards in the water
2. How to implement risk assessments
3. Is my risk assessment suitable and sufficient?

Do I need to review my risk assessment?

A risk assessment will need to be reviewed if: 

• There is a reason to suspect it is no longer valid.
• There has been a significant change in the matters to which it relates.

Why might my risk assessment no longer be valid? 

A risk assessment might no longer be valid because: 

• The legal provision to which it relates has changed. 
• The approved code of practice to which it relates has changed. 
• A defect in the measuring equipment used to assess the risk has been found. 
• A deficiency in the methods used in the risk assessment has been identified or suspected. 
• The Discovery of the risk assessment exercise never took place. 
• A particular provision requires you to review the assessment at a defined interval. 

What significant changes may require a risk assessment to be reviewed? 

Significant changes may include: 

• Updated guidance materially relevant to the assessment has been published. 
• A change in personnel has occurred. 
• A change in work patterns has occurred. 
• A change in work equipment has occurred.
• A serious incident or near miss has occurred. 
• New knowledge of the risk to workers has been identified. 
• A specifier requires you to review the assessment at a defined interval. 

How do I review my risk assessment?

To review your risk assessment, you should consider: 

• Inspect the work and workers to which your risk assessment relates. 
• Ask workers to review the assessment and suggest any material changes. 
• Identify any new sources of guidance that are relevant to your assessment. 
• Review accident, incident, and near-miss data.
• Utilizing different assessment methods to verify the residual risk identified. 
• Validate the methods and equipment used in the risk assessment. 
• Consult an independent third-party competent person for advice. 
• Audit the process. 

How do I make reviewing my risk assessments a productive exercise? 

If your risk assessment review is not leading to new findings, your own knowledge may be acting as a constraint on identifying potential weaknesses in the assessment. 

Consider one or more of the following to increase the productivity of your risk assessment review: 

(a) Prioritise - rank your incidents for the year in terms of frequency and severity. Take the top 5 of each and prioritise a review of these assessments. Focussing your energy and time on a smaller number of risk assessments can improve the quality of your findings. Leave the rest until another time. 

(b) Team exercise - pick a serious incident type to focus on. The scenario is that the incident happened 30 days ago. Ask your team to act as investigators, speak to the individuals on shift, request the necessary documents, and generate findings. 

(c) Tag team - review a risk assessment and associated processes together with a colleague from another site or team. Discuss any weaknesses and potential improvements which could be made to the assessment. 

(d) Bird's eye view - search online for incidents in other organizations similar to the risk assessment hazards in your risk assessment. Think about how those incidents occurred and whether something similar could happen at your workplace. Reviewing the case summaries on this blog might provide you with a starting point. 

(e) Staff poll - issue a digital poll to your team and ask them to rank incidents listed in your risk assessment regarding how likely they think they are to occur at this site and their reasons why. Review the reasons and the poll results to identify the area in which to focus your review efforts. 

(f) Spread the love - hand one risk assessment to each member of your management team relevant to their work area. Ask them to identify the three most important controls and three that are missing. 

(g) The wider reader - the best risk assessors in my experience is the wider readers who all-year-round are reading LinkedIn articles, books, and listening to podcasts on the material around the periphery of safety, risk and human behaviour. If you can be this person, it will go a long way to improving the quality of your risk assessments. 

Citation: Jacklin, D. 2022. When do I need to review a risk assessment, and how? Water Incident Research Hub, 2 January.