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3 Risk Assessment Fundamentals
Bruce Lyon1 and Bruce Hollcroft2
1 Brown & Brown
2 PayneWest Insurance, A Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC Company
OBJECTIVES
Describe the Fundamentals of the Risk Assessment Process
Introduce the Steps in the Process
Describe How to Complete the Steps Successfully
3.1 Introduction
Organizations, whether they realize it or not, are exposed to hazards and their risks each day, some of which may be capable of significantly affecting the ability to achieve important business goals or even remain in business. Risk assessment is an important and sophisticated tool used to assess an organization’s operational risks so that proper decisions can be made to avoid or effectively reduce and manage risks to an acceptable level. It is considered the cornerstone of risk management, and the basis for the practice of safety.
In Europe, the importance of operational risk assessment is well known and publicized as indicated in the following statement from the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU‐OSHA) website.
If the risk assessment process – the start of the health and safety management approach – is not done well or not done at all, the appropriate preventive measures are unlikely to be identified or put in place.
(EU‐OSHA 2015)
In fact, risk assessments are a common practice in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and other parts of the world. In the United Kingdom, risk assessments have been legally required since 1999 by the Health and Safety Executive (HS&E). As previously stated, the United States is behind other parts of the world in the use of risk assessment; however, there is momentum being generated by recent standards, risk‐centric organizations, and their leaders.
3.2 Risk Assessment Within the Risk Management Process
A central theme in this text is the concept of assessing risk within the principles, framework, and process of risk management. According to the American National Standard Institute’s ANSI/ASSP/ISO 31000 risk management standard, risk management is defined as “coordinated activities to direct and control an organization with regard to risk.” In a way, it is the process of making management decisions based on known risks and the organization’s acceptance of those risks.
The term “risk assessment” is often misused. It’s the authors’ experience that some organizations (and even some safety professionals) refer to hazard inspections, analyses, surveys, and compliance audits as “risk assessments.” Thus, a clear understanding of the term is necessary. ANSI/ASSP/ISO 31000 states there are three distinct sequential components to the act of “risk assessment” which are:
1 Risk Identification – finding, recognizing, and recording hazards.
2 Risk Analysis – understanding consequences and probabilities and existing controls.
3 Risk Evaluation – comparing levels of risk and considering additional controls.
Consequences are the potential outcomes of an undesirable event which is measured by severity. Probability or likelihood is an estimation of the chances of the undesirable event occurring over a unit of time or for a specific activity. Risk assessment is an attempt to “predict” the worst event that could reasonably happen as a result of the hazard or operation, and how likely it is to
