The Power of Risk Assessment

 If you were to embark on the most detailed kind of inspection possible of a manufacturing plant or construction site and identify every potential safety hazard – even those with a microscopic chance of occurring – no doubt the list could be long.

In a perfect world, with unlimited financial resources and boundless time, it might be possible to create a plan to address every one of those hazards. But the fact is that resources and time are finite and that is where a very real-world tool, used extensively by professionals in finance, operations and other disciplines, becomes extraordinarily valuable to safety professionals – risk assessment.

Simply put, risk assessment prioritizes the safety hazards in a workplace according to their severity and likelihood of occurrence. That assessment then becomes the guide for developing a playbook for risk reduction – a process that is best described as a journey. And as you might suspect, the journey never ends. The truth is that in the workplace, as in life, there is no such thing as a totally risk free environment. The real goal, and a very attainable one, is to keep improving your batting average.

At FDRsafety, we are proud to include among our ranks experts in risk assessment and reduction. And we are also proud that one of them, Joe Wolfsberger, a former Vice President, Environment, Health and Safety, for Ingersoll Rand Corporation, has been invited to speak on risk assessment to the IOSH conference taking place on June 16-17 in London. With more than 44,000 members in over 120 countries, IOSH is world’s largest professional health and safety organization.