Risk assessment with IOSH Managing Safely.

Two IOSH Managing Safely courses are being delivered simultaneously by Train to Safety  this week. One out on site, another as an open course, face to face. The IOSH course is famous for being a fantastic introduction to risk assessment for new entrants to the world of health and Safety. IOSH have championed the 5 x 5 likelihood / severity risk matrix, leading to a risk estimate on a scale of 1 to 25, which has become ubiquitous across the country. Currently, the majority of organisations use this 5 x 5 matrix in some form or other. The HSE are so impressed with the basic grasp of risk assessment it provides delegates with, that they accept the qualification as a demonstration of risk assessment competence.

However, there are shortfalls to this foundation of risk assessment. Take a look at some of the issues which would need to be worked on, following the completion of the basic risk assessment modules.

1.      The approach is very much based on assessing static safety hazards, at the expense of longer-term health hazards such as exposure to chemicals or repetitive strain injuries, where far more complex methods of risk assessment are required.

2.      The simple 5 x 5 matrix approach is too limited for more complex industrial processes such as chemicals or aviation sectors where HAZOP studies are required or Failure mode effect analysis etc. are required.

3.      The effect of human error on the overall risk rating is only really hinted at. Safety culture, communications, fatigue and stress are factors which can greatly affect the overall risk.

4.      Narrow focus is given to physical occupational risks without taking into effect cyber-security risk, environmental and social governance risk, or supply chain disruption risk.

5.      Subjective risk perception is not taken into account as such. For example, why did I consider the risk of flying out of Manchester airport last year was much worse than the risk of the car journey to the airport – under time pressure and very early in the morning, when in reality it was (and always will be) massively in the opposite way round.

6.      Cognitive bias leads to poor judgment of low frequency, high impact risk management such as explosion or major fire such as Grenfell fire disaster.

7.      The IOSH course focusses on static or semi-static risk environments as opposed to more dynamic situations such as emergency response, crowd control, lifting operations where a situation may need to be immediately halted.

8.      However, the greatest drawback, as with virtually every other risk assessment course, is the failure to fully consider the cost implications to any control measure in terms of time trouble, effort, and inconvenience to implement the control. How many risk assessors can truly complete these costings? As, being good at the judgement of risk alone will lead to a poor decision when attempting to reduce the risk as far as is reasonably practicable, which is the default standard in the UK, unless regulation otherwise states. Without this knowledge, the problem arises where risk assessors become totally risk averse and cause more problems than are solved.

All things considered, the IOSH Managing safely course, when the colourful and animated course was introduced in 2006,  became a game changer for tutors of risk assessment. It really was a light bulb moment allowing all of the previous eight points to be works on, once this solid foundation had been formed. Hats off to IOSH.