What is risk assessment is a question the HSE answers in five steps and the law answers with a duty. The HSE's guidance, cited below, gives risk assessment as five steps: identify hazards, assess the risks, control the risks, record your findings, review the controls, and says that if you employ 5 or more people you must record your significant findings. Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, cited below, requires every employer to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of their employees, and regulation 3(6) requires an employer with five or more employees to record the significant findings and any group of employees especially at risk. For a contractor it is done per task, on the site, with the person who will do the work, and written as a page the crew can read. The risk assessment template on this site prints the page from your task, free and without an account.
The process
Walk the task, list the hazards, decide who could be harmed and how, judge how likely and how serious, choose the control, state the residual risk. Then write the significant findings, sign, date, and set the review. The process is short; skipping the walk is what makes it wrong.
The duty
Suitable and sufficient, for every employer and for the self-employed regarding their own work; recorded at five or more employees. The record is the evidence of the process, and the template on this site prints it in the shape the regulation describes.
The document
Hazard, who is at risk, control, residual risk, further action, per row; significant findings, author, date, reviewer, review date in the header and footer. One page for a simple task. The template on this site prints it in that shape from the walk's figures, with the hazards numbered for the method.
What it feeds
The method statement, which places each control at a step; the toolbox talk, which repeats it; the incident report, which tests it. DailyLogDesk Pro keeps the assessment with all three against the job. From the vendors' own pricing pages, cited below: SafetyCulture lists its Premium plan at $29 per seat per month billed monthly or $24 billed annually, with a free plan for small teams; Contractor Foreman lists its Basic plan at $49 per month for one user. DailyLogDesk Pro is $29 per month for the whole site team.
Questions people ask about what is risk assessment
Is risk assessment the same as a risk assessment?
The process and the document; the second is the record of the first.
How often is it done?
Per task, and reviewed when the task, the site or the people change and after any incident.
Is the template free?
Yes, without an account.