Companies are legally required to do everything 'reasonably practicable' to protect people from getting harmed. Assessing risk is a good start, but the outcome of the risk assessment must be carefully evaluated and acted upon.
The easiest way to decide what steps should be taken to neutralize a hazard is to take industry best practices and compare their safety measures with control measures you have in place. There is no need for re-inventing the wheel.
But once a comparison doesn't reveal any differences in approach, the health and safety practitioner is left with the options to either get rid of the hazard altogether or look at ways to control the risk so that harm is unlikely.
When the plan is to control the risk, the following principles should be considered and, if possible in the following order:
- try a less risky option by, for example, switching to a less hazardous chemical;
- prevent access to the hazard by placing guards close-by;
- re- organise work to reduce exposure to the hazard, something you often see with road works where barriers are placed between workers and traffic;
- issue (additional) personal protective equipment like clothing, footwear or goggles: and
- provide welfare facilities to minimise the impact. Additional first aid kits or washing facilities for removal of contamination are a perfect example.
Not all interventions come at a serious cost. A trolley placed strategically can force people to use a different route than walking over a recently polished floor.
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