Security and other engineering systems contractors should always understand the hazards and risks associated with any job they do, or supervise, and how any significant risks will be controlled, writes Paul Reeve, CFIOSH, pictured, Director of Business at the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA).
While this is true for electrical safety, it’s just as true for other health and safety issues. In fact, in the commercial sector, falls from height and manual handling injuries are particularly prevalent, and asbestos is an even bigger, industry-defining, health issue.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says that risk assessments (RAs) need to be ‘suitable and sufficient’ and it’s the RA that informs other key health and safety documents such as a ‘Construction Phase Plan’ or a ‘method statement’ (safe system of work). In the public and commercial sectors, clients and the various ‘pre-qualification’ schemes are very keen to see if, and how, the contractor engages with risk assessment. Two basic types of RA are ‘quantified’ (giving a number that indicates the level of risk) and ‘qualitative’ (a general statement eg. ‘low’ or ‘medium’ risk). Either type can be based on the following seven steps…
Step one – understand the activities required for the task/job/project
The starting point for any RA is to understand what the task/job involves. In short, what are the activities involved in this job?
Step two – what are the hazards associated with the activity?
Consider relevant hazards (‘hazards’ are the potential causes of significant harm); and who could be harmed, and how?
Step three – prioritize those hazards
When you have considered the hazards, decide which ones are the most significant (which hazards could lead to significant harm). You can then base your RA mainly on addressing these hazards.
Step four – control measures to reduce the risk of harm
If eliminating a hazard is not an option, you’ll need suitable risk controls to reduce the risk to an acceptable level. So, consider what control measures you’ll need to control the risk of harm. This might include safety measures such as safe isolation, permits to work, safety barriers, site instructions or protective equipment). You may well have general approaches to reducing the risk from any significant hazards that are associated with what you usually do. Note these risk controls first.
Step five – identify any further, job-specific issues
However, there may also be additional, job-specific, health and safety issues. Again, note these (they might range from using a new apprentice to more specific hazards, such as work on MEWPs, or in a refrigeration room). Note what further risk controls you will use.
Step six – clarify responsibility
Add who has supervisory responsibility for ensuring your control measures are actually: 1) available when needed and 2) used and understood by operatives/sub-contractors. Your control measures will need applied properly at the workplace, if your RA is to be a good assessment of the risk.
Step seven – taking everything into account, assess the risk!
The RA then requires you to consider what risk remains, and to who, once all your control measures are in place (this is called the ‘residual risk’). To assess this, consider the following two factors (remember, this is with all your control measures in place):
1) how harmful could an accident or exposure be? and
2) how likely is it to happen? (‘severity x how likely = risk of harm’).
The remaining risk from this activity (the residual risk) is the output of your risk assessment. Now, decide if the remaining risk is sufficiently low. If it’s not, then you need to re-visit what you are doing to control risks from this activity.
Some find that drawing up RAs is confusing and time consuming. To help contractors quickly and effectively assess health and safety risks, and what to do about them, the ECA has developed eRAMS – an activity-based risk assessment and method statement e-service. The outputs from eRAMS can be easily used, stored and sent to interested parties, such as clients or pre-qualification schemes.
eRAMS is designed specifically for contractors, following input from clients, contractors and other industry experts, and it has had extensive field testing. The service also contains a ‘Construction Phase Plan’ module, to help ensure compliance with the CDM 2015 Regulations.
In addition to protecting your workers and those who work around them, meeting health and safety requirements can play an important role in securing new work. eRAMS can help you to reassure clients that they are highly unlikely to face a financial penalty or unwanted publicity from an accident taking place on site. The ECA’s recently upgraded eRAMs service, based on concise e-risk assessment and method statement templates, covers general health and safety issues and is free to ECA members. The service is also available commercially to other contractors, via CHAS. More information at https://www.eca.co.uk/business-industry-support/health-safety/risk-assessments-method-statements.aspx.
