Risk Assessment
This is a crucial process at the heart of all safety activities and audits, and mandatory for CE marking and under legislation such as the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations. It is also part of CE marking of new machinery (the new Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC already in force includes explicit emphasis on a thorough risk assessment). The HSE's PUWER ACOP (Approved Code of Practice) makes clear that risk assessment is an essential part of PUWER conformity (although it is not specifically called for in those regulations).
There are several methods of conducting a risk assessment, but they all entail the identification of hazards and the estimation and evaluation of risks. Although specialist industries and sectors have evolved their own methods (e.g. nuclear, shipping) our recommended method for most organisations is based on BS EN ISO 14121-1: 2007. This standard replaces BS EN 1050 and supports both CE marking and PUWER. In some cases, notably in process industries, a HAZOP technique is more suitable than this standard. In a few isolated instances, risk assessment can be supported by FMEA (Failure Mode & Effect Analysis) and FTA (Fault Tree Analysis).
Selecting the most appropriate safety measures for a given situation is probably the most challenging part of a risk assessment process, but it is key to achieving safety in a cost effective, practical, and affordable manner. Some advisers consider that regulations such as PUWER make no allowance for risk assessment, stating that the requirements are absolute, but adopting this misleading advice risks using up valuable resources applying measures which make little contribution to safety, and not necessarily on priorities. A proper risk assessment will ensure safety measures are adequate and appropriate for each circumstance.
Headlands Consulting has developed risk assessment methodology and documentation specifically for machinery-based work equipment based on the latest standard, and has extensive practical experience of assessing machinery safety in process industry and in batch production.