Risk Assessment Guidance

What is risk assessment?

Risk assessment is the process of assessing an activity or area in order to identify hazards, and the degree of risk arising from those hazards. For each hazard the question to be asked is:

‘Is the level of risk, taking into account the existing control measures or precautions, acceptable?’

If the answer is NO, then more controls will be required – see Risk Controls page. If the answer is YES, then those controls need to be implemented and monitored to ensure they remain in place and are working – see Performance Monitoring page.

The risk assessment process

The risk assessment process involves the following 5 steps:

Hazard Identification, make use of the Hazard Grid and the hazard checklist
Identify the People at Risk
Assess Risk and evaluate the existing controls (risk matrix)
Risk Control, identify if further controls are required
Measure Performance and ensure that control measures are used and maintained.

Risk Assessments must be reviewed:

whenever anything has changed e.g. rearranging space; changes to the activity; change of personnel;
following an accident or near-miss; or
every 12 months.

Those carrying out risk assessments should check relevant policy, arrangements & guidance (also use the H&S A to Z) for the activities that they are assessing.

Those carrying out risk assessments must consult with staff involved in the activities and encourage their participation in the process including trade unions.

Keeping records

Risks assessments and controls must be documented where the risk is anything other than trivial.

The university's standard risk assessment template should be used for most spaces/activities but there are also a number of topic specific risk assessment templates (see Specific risk assessments below).

In order to ensure precautions or control measures are being followed it is necessary to make sure that they are included in any information, induction, instruction and training given to staff, students, visitors and contractors.

Risk assessments must be signed by line managers and the information relating to controls should somehow be communicated to persons who could be affected by the space or activity. This could be via induction, instruction, training and/or safe systems of work (SSOW).

A copy of the up to date and signed risk assessment must be kept locally in the Health and Safety (Blue) Folder.

For storage of digital copies of risk assessments it us up to the group/Principal Investigator to decide how these are managed the best options would be to use either a local server or a SharePoint site which is accessible by the whole team.

Specialised risk assessments

In some circumstances more detailed hazard specific risk assessments are required and may need to be carried with input from the Health and Safety Team. Specialised risk assessments are required for:

*These risk assessment require higher level approval by the relevant University wide committee.

Risk Assessment Training

A Risk Assessment Moodle course provides a general introduction to risk assessment at the University of Warwick and is for all staff and students who are required to carry out risk assessment.
A Chemical Assessment and Laboratory Safety Awareness Moodle course provides information to support with chemical specific risk assessment (COSHH) and laboratory safety. It is designed for both staff and students who work with chemicals.
A Risk Assessment, COSHH and SSOW Workshop is run jointly between the School of Engineering and WMG. This explores these topics in more detail and looks at the methods the tools available to support the process.
There may be topic specific training available. A training request form is available here, but it may be that specific training is organised locally either within a group or the wider School as necessary.

For Health and Safety additional advice please contact the Health and Safety Officer