Why Risk Assessment is Important
In current situation many organizations faces several of risks due to the different types of scenarios. This type of risks can occur in the organization due to the organizational change and changes in the market. In such scenarios risk assessment becomes very much important to minimize occurrence of this risks (Li 2014). Also, the risk management is important as without proper risk assessment organizations will not be able to define the future objectives. The overall goal of the risk management is making sure that organization only considers the risks that will help the organizations to reach its primary goal while the other risks must be under control (Covello and Merkhoher 2013). Risk assessment can be considered as combined effort of identifying the potential events of future that can have negative impacts on organizations and making judgements on the tolerability of the identified risks based on the risk analysis.
Many organization faces various types of risks and to mitigate these risks, risk assessment is a very much important step. In this paper why the firms manages the risk and the lessons learned from the risk assessment will be discussed. For the discussion regarding risk assessment a literature review will be done on risk assessment cases of various organizations.
One of the important risk assessment examples is the risk assessment of drinking water in Bergen, Norway which was performed by the SINTEF organization. Here the risks related with the drinking water is measured. In this case the hazards were identified thorough the risk assessment. Also, a risk matrix is used in this case for the identification of assigned consequences and probabilities based on a discretised scale (Knutson and Huettel 2015). In this risk matrix three dissimilar types of consequences were considered that are effects of water quality, effects of water quantity and consequences to reputation and water utility economy. Also, in the risk analysis part all the elements of the supply chain were included. This risk analysis was done by using the Coarse Risk Analysis (Aven 2015). For a detailed type of risk analysis quantitative approach has been used in this Coarse Risk Analysis. Different type of tools and methods has been used for the estimation of consequences and probability that are available for the identified hazards. In this risk assessment probability of hygienic barriers in the process of water treatment has been identified and also the disinfection steps has been calculated that are based on detail analysis of the past data of SCADA. In this case example analysis was done by a multidisciplinary team and this team includes water utility personnel and some researchers. Depending on this analysis new type of risk mitigating techniques has been discovered for all of the elements within the water supply system and it will overall safety of the water supply system. From this risk assessment lessons learned on how a project environment can be managed (Mir and Pinnington 2014). Also, how various type of tools and techniques can be used during the risk assessment has been learned.
Examples of Risk Assessment in Different Industries
Another considerable important example is the aseptic transfer risk assessment which is related with the pharmaceutical industry (Pujol et al. 2013). In the context of the pharmaceutical industry there are various types of risk assessment approaches are available. In this case the respective risk assessment approaches has been done by some regulatory authorities. In this case various type of risk assessment techniques can be used which includes fault tree analysis, failure mode and effects analysis and the hazard analysis critical control points (Ericson 2015). A pharmaceutical manufacturing facility can face various types of risks as it always needs to be sterilised. Dust can be a big risk in this case as autoclave machine is malfunctioned which is used for preparing stopper for sterile injectable product. In this case stoppers will be sterilised using different type of autoclave and the sterilised stoppers will be transported to filling machine. This risk assessment is done by four step. This four step are the route map, hazard identification, process flow and assessment of environmental monitoring. In this risk assessment of the pharmaceutical organization before straining any type of activity a simulation need to be performed so any type of problem can be detected (Xue and Chen 2013). Simulation can be repeated whenever any type of variability occurs. From the risk assessment it has been determined that the main focus should be on the ease of transportation.
Another example of the risk assessment is drinking water case which was conducted by the DVGW Water Technology Centre Karlsruhe in Freiburg-Ebnet, Germany. In this risk assessment another collaborating partner was the badenova AG & Co. KG and the local water utility. This risk assessment was done as there was some potential hazard in the groundwater which can be harmful. The main aim of this risk assessment is focusing on aspects of the water quality in groundwater catchment. The main method that is used in risk assessment is the GIS assisted risk analysis (Wang et al. 2014). The vulnerability of the water supply is defined by some intrinsic natural factors. From the risk analysis, final outcome was the risk intensity map. This risk intensity map has perfectly visualised the risk that are associated with many hazardous events (Hamamin et al. 2018). This hazardous events depends on the property of hazard and the location of the hazard depending on the natural proactive function. In this risk assessment process the main advantage of the applied method is that it can manage the spatial data within the GIS in a simultaneous way for all the catchment area. Risks are easy to identify because of their precise location and related attributes (Tao 2013). This provides possibility of analysing the risks individually. The GIS assisted risk assessment technique is totally based on digital data or appropriate information. In such cases when no digital data are available, data must be gathered from geo-referenced paper maps and information from the field survey and maps. From the GIS assisted risk assessment technique it has been learned that the process of risk management is an iterative type of process of continuous updating as precondition changes randomly and more information become available. It has been also learned that GIS methods can stimulate possible effects of appropriate option of risk reduction.
Lessons Learned from Risk Assessment
One of the common example of risk assessment is related with general office cleaning. From this example of the risk assessment wide range of hazards can be identified that are presented in a small type of business (Burns 2016). Thus from this example steps can be identified that are important for controlling the risks. For demonstrating the office cleaning risk assessment case, here example of the Smith’s cleaners has been selected. The Smith cleaner’s provides commercial service of cleaning to other organizations and businesses. For a particular business three cleaners of smith works everyday from 5.00 pm to 7.00 pm and they clean toilet and office areas. Also, Smith’s cleaner sometime uses temporary staffs for covering shortage of staffs. Here in this case risk assessment is done in several steps. In the first step the manager has provided some relevant guidelines to the temporary workers and analysed the current cleaning industry. In the next step hazards in the offices were identified and this done by inspecting the working area of the cleaners and safety check of the workplace. Also, previous accident records will be analysed and if there found any then the reason of accident will be identified (Taroun 2014). From the brief analysis the main hazards that have been found are the slips and trips which cause serious injury to the cleaners, issues with the cleaning chemicals such as bleaching powder, manual handling of objects, electrical equipment handling, fire related hazards and working at heights. Thus in this case by mitigating those identified risks potential problems due to the risks can be managed. From this risk assessment is has been learned that the organizational risk can be major or minor but all of the risks should be analysed properly and must be mitigated with equal importance (Popov, Lyon and Hollcroft 2016). In this case it has been seen that the wet floor can be a minor type of risks but can result a major accident which can cause big loss to the organizations.
Another common example of risk assessment is risk assessment in the financial and management consultancy services. In this scenario the office of the management consultancy service contain typical type of furniture equipment and there is also a kitchen where foods can be heated and drinks can be prepared. Toilets and other washing facilities are available on every floor of the office. The office was built before the year of 2000 thus the building was surveyed for checking asbestos presence. From the survey it has been found that asbestos materials are in a good condition and no places of the office are damaged. Now, here the risk assessment has been done of the office premises. In this case for performing the risk assessment office premises has been analysed very carefully. Also, an interview has been taken of the supervisors for assessing any type of previous hazardous cases. After the analysis of workplace potential hazards that can harm the workers and how it can harm the peoples has been noted down. For each of the identified hazards controls has been identified and the controls that was not effective one was replaced with some new controls (Smith, Merna and Jobling 2014). The overall findings from the risk assessment shared with the other workers in the office and the risk assessment copies were given to all the staffs of the offices for avoiding any type of hazardous event. From this risk assessment it has been learned that what kind of approach should be taken by a small organization in an event of risk assessment.
Tools and Techniques Used in Risk Assessment
Another example for the risk assessment is the car parking attendants. In this case the risk assessment will be done of a car park operator service that provides a parking management service in local area. This car parking service includes multi storey car parking service and on street car parking service. Here one of the big issue is with the issuing parking tickets. Also, there is a sub-contractor that for the organization that provides vehicle clamping and removal services. The control room for the parking services are available in the multi storey car parking facility. For this service the organization is currently having 40 employees. This 40 peoples are divided into two types of job sector. The first one serves at the cleaning services and the rest employees are the parking attendants. Considering this situation a risk assessment has been done by the contract manager on the parking attendants. First of all the manager assessed the type of violence that can occur during the car parking session. There after hazards has been identified by the manager. In this case the manager determined the hazards by inspecting the area of car parking where routes for car parking has been analysed. In the next step the manager discussed about the health and safety issues of employees with the supervisor of car parking area. What kind of injury can be done due to car accident has been analysed in this case as parking attendants are always vulnerable to the car accidents (Ashley-Smith 2013). Here in this case from the risk assessment the main risk that has been determined is the injury due to the car related accidents. Analysing the past cases it has been determined that the parking attendants can die also in such cases and from the risk assessment it has been also determined that the probability of the risk occurrence becomes more high in the cases of drunk driver. Also, the other hazards that has been identified are the lone working situations where the employee might be abused, slips and trips due to the wet surface and extreme weather conditions (Stave and Wald 2016). Thus here the risk assessment is done by the organization for the safety of the employees. If the organization fails to provide a safe working place to the employees then it will be a complete loss for the organization as it will down the morale of the employees (Arunchand and Ramanathan 2013). Thus ultimate loss will be faced by the organization. From this risk assessment it ash been learned that generally the small types of projects comes with smaller types of risks while big projects have some large risks. Also, it has been learned that the manager is not always capable of identifying the hazards so the employees can come up with their observation of hazards for better identification of the risks.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion it can be concluded that risk assessment is a very much important procedure for the identification of the hazards for creating a safer workplace. This risk assessment and the controls are some ongoing process. Thus it is very much important to undertake the control process and the risk assessment within proper place and time for overall improvement of the workplace condition as it will become safer for the employees and the peoples who enters in the workplace. The risk assessment is not any type of single method or a monolithic process. From the above literature review it has been assessed that the all types of risk assessment process involves some common principles. Also, risk assessment is not comparable with any type of field with many types of experts. Proper utilization of the risk assessment results are also very much important. The process of risk assessment result utilization starts with strategies development tactics development for mitigating the identified risks. Then it is followed by preparation and the implementation of the CRR plan. Following the implementation of risk assessment strategies all the implemented strategies are monitored for any type of modification as necessary. Also, it has been assessed that risk assessment is always not so simplistic. It can also have some adverse effects which depends on various factors.
References:
Arunchand, C. H., and Hareesh N. Ramanathan. “Organizational culture and employee morale: A public sector enterprise experience.” Journal of Strategic Human Resource Management 2, no. 1 (2013): 1.
Ashley-Smith, Jonathan. Risk assessment for object conservation. Routledge, 2013.
Aven, Terje. Risk analysis. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Burns, Paul. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2016.
Covello, Vincent T., and Miley W. Merkhoher. Risk assessment methods: approaches for assessing health and environmental risks. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013.
Ericson, Clifton A. Hazard analysis techniques for system safety. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Hamamin, D. F., R. A. Qadir, S. S. Ali, and A. P. Bosch. “Hazard and risk intensity maps for water-bearing units: a case study.” International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology 15, no. 1 (2018): 173-184.
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Li, Wenyuan. Risk assessment of power systems: models, methods, and applications. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
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Pujol, Laure, Isabelle Albert, Nicholas Brian Johnson, and Jeanne-Marie Membré. “Potential application of quantitative microbiological risk assessment techniques to an aseptic-UHT process in the food industry.” International journal of food microbiology 162, no. 3 (2013): 283-296.
Smith, Nigel J., Tony Merna, and Paul Jobling. Managing risk in construction projects. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
Stave, Gregg M., and Peter H. Wald, eds. Physical and biological hazards of the workplace. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
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Taroun, Abdulmaten. “Towards a better modelling and assessment of construction risk: Insights from a literature review.” International journal of Project management 32, no. 1 (2014): 101-115.
Wang, Z. Michael, Hugh A. Devine, Weidong Zhang, and Kenneth Waldroup. “Using a GIS and GIS-assisted water quality model to analyze the deterministic factors for lead and copper corrosion in drinking water distribution systems.” Journal of Environmental Engineering 140, no. 9 (2014): A4014004.
Xue, Dingyü, and Yang Chen. System simulation techniques with MATLAB and Simulink. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.
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