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Dynamic Risk Assessment Techniques Can Inform Safety Compliance

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Dynamic effects: how dynamic risk assessment techniques can inform safety compliance
Dynamic risk assessment is often seen as only applying to very particular circumstances such as the emergency services. However, the principles it teaches can surely inform all aspects of health and safety awareness.
Risk assessment is seen as a core process in health and safety. In general terms, what is sometimes described as systematic risk assessment assumes that we observe, analyse and understand risks that might cause harm to individuals, then we remove or mitigate risk to provide a safe environment and a safe system of work. This will involve training and consultation with staff and contractors and, in some scenarios, will include customers and …show more content…

Of course, such views do not reflect the whole reality. For example, if in the pursuit of economic activity individuals need to drive, work alone or handle chemicals, there is always an element of risk. It is disingenuous to say otherwise. We may, of course, minimise and control these risks very effectively so that even near misses only arise occasionally — in other words, there is a proportionate response. However, making sure that individuals are aware of dynamic techniques can be positively helpful to support existing protocols and controls.
There is one other aspect to this approach to consider. Dynamic techniques can apply to lower-level risks that present themselves in high risk scenarios; the author remembers visiting a chemical processing plant where no risk assessment had been done for office and catering activities on site. While these were lower risk compared to that of the plant, they should not have been ignored. Why expose individuals (and shareholders) to unnecessary risks when they could have been so easily managed? This is one example where dynamic techniques could have led to staff questioning risks not being covered by existing systematic techniques. The speed or unpredictability of change does not necessarily need to be present for dynamic principles to be influential in the risk management process.
Dynamic stages
For a particular task or activity, systematic risk assessment should always be followed. Unplanned events are

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