Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Risk Control in the Workplace

What is hazard identification, risk assessment, risk control?
Hazard identification is the process used to identify all the possible situations in the workplace where people may be exposed to injury, illness or disease.
Risk assessment is the process used to determine the likelihood that people may be exposed to injury, illness or disease in the workplace arising from any situation identified during the hazard identification process.

Risk control is the process used to identify all practicable measures for eliminating or reducing the likelihood of injury, illness or disease in the workplace, to implement the measures and to continually review the measures in order to ensure their effectiveness.

Why are they important?
School Principals have moral and legal obligations to provide and maintain a safe and healthy workplace.
To effectively manage health and safety in a school and discharge the moral and legal obligations, it is imperative for Principals to:

  • Identify any potentially hazardous situations (which may cause injury, illness or disease) around the school on an ongoing basis before they occur
  • Assess the likelihood of each of the hazardous situations
  • Identify and effectively implement appropriate measures to prevent their occurrence
  • continually review the measures to ensure their effectiveness

What does the law require?
Various Occupational Health and Safety regulations have very specific provisions that require employers to ensure that they are attended to.

Some examples of these provisions are:

  • any task undertaken, or to be undertaken, by an employee involving hazardous manual handling is identified;
  • all hazards (potential to cause injury or illness) associated with the installation, commissioning, erection, operation, inspection, maintenance, repair, service and cleaning of plant and associated systems of work are identified;
  • an assessment is made to determine whether there is any risk (likelihood of injury or illness) associated with the identified hazards; and
  • an assessment is made to determine whether there is any risk (likelihood of injury, illness or disease) associated with the use of a hazardous substance at the workplace; and
  • any risk to employees from exposure to noise is identified; and
  • employees' exposure to noise is controlled so as to minimise risk to health and safety.
  • any risk is eliminated, or if that is not practicable, reduced so far as is practicable.

Hazard identification
Hazards in a workplace can arise from a number of sources including:

  • poor workplace design
  • hazardous tasks being performed in the workplace
  • poorly designed plant being introduced into the workplace
  • incorrect installation, commissioning, use, inspection, maintenance, service, repair or alteration of plant in the workplace
  • people being exposed to hazardous substances, processes or environment.

What are the hazards in schools?

Workplace hazards can be divided into six groups:

  1. Physical hazards: eg. noise, dust, electricity, heat and cold
  2. Chemical hazards: eg. science chemicals, toners and inks, cleaning agents
  3. Ergonomic hazards: eg. furniture design, lighting and equipment design
  4. Radiation hazards: eg. electric arc welding processes
  5. Psychological hazards: eg. staff stress
  6. Biological hazards: eg. viruses from farm animals and air conditioning systems

The hazard identification process is designed to identify all the possible situations where people may possibly be exposed to injury, illness and disease arising from all sources including the above.
Prior to the introduction of any plant, substances, processes or work practices in the workplace, it is essential for the hazard identification process to be carried out to identify whether there is any potential for injury, illness or disease associated with such introduction.

Carrying out hazard identification for all existing plant, substances, processes and work practices in your school may require some effort. It is a good idea to split the school into several areas for the hazard identification process, and to assess one area at a time. Priority should be given to areas with hazardous plant, substances, processes or environment.
Staff and other employees working in these specific areas who have experience of any hazards should be involved in the hazard identification process. Advice should also be sought from people who are associated with the activities and processes in the area because they may provide valuable input.
People undertaking hazard identification should have the necessary training to look for:
Mechanical hazards including:

  • stabbing points
  • abrasion areas
  • flying particles
  • any protrusions which could cause injury
  • "drawing in" points
  • shearing points
  • impact and crushing areas
  • cutting areas
  • entanglement areas

Non-mechanical hazards including:

  • falling objects
  • high pressure fluid
  • high temperature objects
  • working in very hot or cold conditions
  • ergonomic hazards including manual handling
  • radiation
  • mist, dust, fumes
  • suffocation
  • engulfment
  • biological hazards, viral
  • slipping, tripping and falling hazards
  • electrical shocks and burns
  • chemical burns, toxicity, flammability
  • noise
  • vibration

Checklists should be developed to assist staff who are involved in the hazard identification process in the systematic identification of hazards.

Hazards in the workplace can change from day to day.

In order to effectively manage workplace health and safety, schools need to introduce proper systems and procedures to ensure hazard identification is carried out on a regular basis.

Risk assessment
Once the hazards have been identified, they should be listed for a risk assessment to be carried out in consultation with the relevant health and safety representatives and employees.
The purpose of risk assessment is to determine whether there is any likelihood of injury, illness or disease associated with each of the potentially hazardous situations identified in the hazard identification process by considering:

  • whether any person (staff, students and visitors) would be exposed to the identified situations under all possible scenarios (eg during installation, commissioning, erection, operation, inspection, maintenance, repair, service and cleaning of plant)
  • what existing measures are in place to protect the health and safety of staff and students who may be exposed
  • how adequate the existing measures are for protecting the health and safety of staff students and others who may be exposed

Existing control measures should not be regarded as adequate simply because an incident hasn't occurred. This particularly applies where the existing control measures are only administrative controls (eg. training, safety procedures, safety signs, supervision) or personal protective equipment (eg. safety gloves, safety glasses).

These types of control rely heavily on human behaviour in doing the right thing and any deviation in behaviour (eg. students not following the safety procedures because some person or situation is distracting them) could cause injury, illness or disease.

Risk control
Under OHS legislation, employers are required to introduce control measures to eliminate risk, or to reduce the risk so far as is practicable, if the current measures are found to be inadequate and there is a likelihood that injury, illness or disease will result from a particular situation.

The term "practicable" has a particular meaning under the OHS legislation. It means practicable having regard to:

  • the severity of the hazard or risk
  • the state of knowledge about that hazard or risk and strategies of removing or mitigating that hazard or risk
  • the availability and suitability of ways to remove or mitigate that hazard or risk
  • the cost of removing or mitigating that hazard or risk

The risk control process should be carried out in consultation with the relevant health and safety representatives and employees.
In identifying new risk control measures, the most effective form of control measures is to eliminate the risk (eg. by eliminating the process). If that is not practicable you need to identify effective measures to reduce the risk. The use of administrative controls or personal protective equipment must not solely be depended on to reduce the risk unless it can be established that the following are not practicable measures:

  • substituting the plant or substance with another one that is less hazardous
  • using engineering controls (eg. modifying the design of the workplace or plant, or environmental conditions)
  • isolating people from the source of exposure
  • changing the objects used in the task involving manual handling
  • using mechanical aids for manual handling tasks

Before any decision is taken as to which type of risk control measures ought to be used, consideration should be given to the severity of injury, illness or disease that could occur. If the severity is high (ie. fatality, serious injury etc), a higher hierarchy order of control (ie. elimination, substitution, engineering controls, isolation) should be used. Sometimes they may have to be used in combination with administrative controls and in some cases personal protective equipment.
It is not always practicable to immediately implement the higher hierarchy of control and there may still be a need to keep the process/activity going. In such situations interim control measures (in the form of administrative controls in combination with personal protective equipment) may be used until the higher hierarchy of control can be implemented.

If there is an immediate risk to health or safety, you must make sure the process/activity in question is ceased until measures are taken to remove the immediate risk.
Once a decision is taken on the suitable risk control measures, a plan should be developed in consultation with the relevant health and safety representatives and employees for the implementation of those measures. The implementation plan should identify:

  • the actions required
  • implementation timetable
  • who are responsible for the implementation of the actions

Once the new risk control measures are in place, there is a need to make sure that they are maintained.

Record keeping
Maintenance of appropriate records will assist to:

  • know what has been done and what more needs to be done
  • demonstrate compliance with obligations under OHS legislation.

Documents should be kept which provide information on:

  • when and where hazard identification was carried out
  • a summary of identified hazards
  • whether there is any risk associated with each hazard identified
  • the risk assessment method used
  • what new measures have been identified to control any risk
  • what measures are regarded as not practicable and the reason
  • what are the practicable risk control measures for implementation
  • the person responsible for the implementation of the practicable risk control measures
  • who was involved in the hazard identification, risk assessment and risk control processes

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