Physical Risk Management

Overview

Physical Risk Management

There are many physical hazards in a workplace (some are listed below):

• Noise
• Chemicals and Dusts including crystalline silica
• Biological
• Temperature
• Manual tasks
• Plant and Equipment
• Working at Height
• Electricity
• Live Animals
• Working Alone

Risk management generally, is a proactive process that helps you respond to change and facilitate continuous improvement in your business. It should be planned, systematic and cover all reasonably foreseeable hazards and associated risks. A risk assessment involves making an allowance for what could happen if someone is exposed to a hazard (for example, manual task {lifting} or operating plant) and the likelihood of an incident happening.  A risk assessment can help you to determine:

• How severe a risk is (Extreme, High, Medium or Low).
• Whether the existing control measures are effective.
• What action you should take to control the risk.
• How urgently the action needs to be taken.

Identifying, Assessing and Controlling Risks

Risk assessments do not happen by chance or guesswork. Business have to think about what could go wrong and what the consequences could be.  A business must do whatever you can which is ‘reasonably practicable’ to eliminate or minimise work health and safety risks.  This is known as risk management and involves the four key steps:

• Identify hazards—find out what could cause harm.
• Assess the risks – understand how serious the harm could be and the likelihood of it happening.
• Control risks – implement an effective control measure that is reasonably practicable and review the control measure to ensure it remains effective.

A risk assessment will assist to:

• identify which workers are at risk of exposure to the hazard
• determine what sources of hazard and processes are causing the risk
• identify if and what kind of control measures should be implemented, and
• Checking the effectiveness of existing control measures.

Gallagher Workplace Risk has the expertise to assist client’s manage physical hazards.  Our team’s wide depth of knowledge and experience allow for practical ways to assist clients to reduce their risk to physical hazards.