Risk Assessments

The real foundation of health and safety management is the Risk Assessment. If you cannot identify and evaluate your risks, how are you going to manage them? Both general and specific health and safety legislation requires risks to be assessed and eliminated or controlled. These include general risks, fire risks, manual handling, hazardous substances, display screen equipment (DSE) and work equipment.

We can help you to identify your hazards and a suitable system to identify the risks. The system will enable you to communicate the information from the assessments to your employees in the most effective way.

If appropriate, we can carry out risk assessments for you involving the people who know most about the subject - those managing and carrying out the work. Following evaluation of the risks, we can help to propose methods of control to eliminate or reduce them.

General Risk Assessments
Carrying out a general risk assessment is a matter of following a few basic steps, however there are a number of different styles, some of which may suit your business better than others.

Display Screen Equipment (DSE) Assessments
'Users' are those who habitually use DSE (computer workstations) as a significant part of their normal work. An employer must carry out an assessment of the risks and reduce them. See our page on Display Screen Equipment to see how we can help.

Fire Risk Assessments
It is no longer the responsibility of your local Fire and Rescue Service to tell you what you must do to reduce the risk of fire and to ensure that means of escape and means for fighting fires are adequate for your business. A fire risk assessment must be carried out for your premises.

Risk Assessment for Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres (DSEAR)
Anyone using substances which may produce an explosive atmosphere, such as flammable liquids or gases, or organic dusts, is required to prevent the formation of such an atmosphere or to take precautions to prevent it being ignited. DSEAR assessment is required and areas must be classified into zones indicating the level of risk.
We can assist companies using flammable substances in their normal activities to conduct these risk assessments.

Work Equipment Assessments The particular hazards presented by the use of machinery should be assessed to identify if they have been suitably controlled by the design of the machine or by safeguarding. While CE marking on equipment declares that certain essential safety requirements have been met, it is possible that the way it is used in your business may give rise to hazards uncontrolled by the manufacturer.

With an extensive engineering background, we can carry out effective assessments for a large range of equipment.

Manual Handling Assessments
All employers have a duty to avoid manual handling, for example by the use of mechanical aids. Where this is not practical, they must carry out an assessment of the risk of injury.

Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Assessments
It is obviously preferable to avoid the use of substances hazardous to health, or to substitute them with something less dangerous. However, if this is not practical, before using such a substance, an assessment of the risks must be carried out. The assessment should take into account such activities as maintenance and cleaning as well as the main production task.
There may also be a need to measure the level of exposure to the substance(s) in order to assess the risk accurately.