Safety Talk Box 06- Managing Safely by "Controlling Risk"

Greetings of the day!

Hope all are working in a safe and healthy manner.

This is in continuation to the e-mail “Safety Talk Box 05- Introducing Managing Safely (b)- “Assessing Risk” dt. 02^th July, 2018..

This is a topic introduced by Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH). Institute of Occupational Safety and Health is registered in England and Wales. IOSH is a charted body for Health and safety professionals.

With the studies given by IOSH, we being the members of organization can set standards and support, develop and connect our team workers with resources, guidance, events and training. We can be the voice of our team workers and campaign on issues that affect millions of working people.

 

In the last topic we had understood how to access the risks in the work environment, what’s next? It’s one thing to know that a risk exists, but you need to know what to do about it.

Risk is an ever-present part of our daily lives, at work and at home. Risk is affected by several factors. For example, the risk of falling from a tower while climbing tower will be affected by the strength of step bolts, ability to climb the tower using step bolts and method of working.

Remember that a worker who is learning to do work on live line is a hazard to himself as well as to others who are working on same line but having a qualified and experienced worker/instructor and dual controls in working helps to control or mitigate the risk.

Risk control involves introducing changes in the way we work in order to minimize risk. Whatever you plan to do, you’ll need to estimate it’s impact on the likelihood and consequences of the risk.

Remember: Risk= likelihood × consequence

Therefore, if you want to reduce risk, you need to look at:

a)      Reduce the likelihood of the hazardous event happening

b)      Reducing the consequence of the hazardous event

c)       Reducing both factors

To show how implementing risk control measures affect, we’ll use the five-point scales for likelihood and consequence that we had introduced earlier-

Let’s suppose, you are working at site for OPGW live line installation-

a)      Reducing the likelihood of the hazardous event: Suppose the likelihood of a worker (working at drum side) coming in contact with saw blade is 4 and the consequence of this is 5, so the risk rating is 20. Immediate action is required.

Providing a guard/ safety gloves will reduce the likelihood of coming in direct contact with saw blade. If we assume that the safety gloves is used most but not all of the time, the likelihood is reduced to 1 and risk rating will become 5.

b)       Reducing the consequence of the hazardous event: Suppose you are working near a place where fire-works are going on and you had placed winch machine at that place. At this stage, the likelihood of the chemical(petrol/diesel) used in winch machine, being exposed to fire is 3 and the consequence of this is 4, giving risk rating to be 12. Which in turn means measures to be taken fast! If the winch machine place is replaced by drum point then the likelihood of the same will remain 3 and the consequence will reduce to 2 giving the risk rating 6.

c)       Reducing both likelihood and consequence: If in point (a), if we use the safety gloves as well as hydraulic cutter then the likelihood will reduce to 1 as well as the consequence will also reduce to 1 which in result will make risk rating 1.

The level of risk which is left after we’ve introduced our control measures is often referred to as residual risk.

How do we decide which risk control to use?

To help decide on risk control, there’s an order or hierarchy of risk control that we can use. Baasically, risk control options at the top of the hierarchy are the preferred option because they are much less reliant on people doing something. The can also protect large number of people. We can categorize risk control options as follows-

1)      Eliminating the hazard

2)      Reducing the hazard

3)      Preventing people coming into contact with the hazard (either by putting distance between people and the hazard or by enclosing the hazard)

4)      Safe System of Work (SSOW)

5)      Personal Protective Equipment (PPE- the last line of defense)      

You must provide adequate safety signs if there is a significant risk that can’t be avoided or controlled in any other way.

Always remember that all these methods have weaknesses but some are less prone to failure than others. Usually, risk controls that rely on people to do something or believe in a certain manner are weaker than those that don’t.

!! You can prevent workers from being unsafe by controlling the risks !!

So control the risks & manage your site Safely !!!

THINK SAFETY WORK SAFELY

This all is for your information and further actions required