How do you automate risk assessments?

Why do risk assessments take so long to produce?

Because most of each one is rewritten from something that already exists. A supervisor or manager opens last year's assessment for similar work, copies it, edits the location and the dates, adds a hazard or two, and hopes nothing in the old version no longer applies. Then it waits for someone to check it, often at the end of a long day, before the job can start.

The cost is not only the hours. Copied assessments carry old controls forward, miss hazards that are specific to this job, and name operatives whose training has lapsed. If you want a view of the time involved across your processes, the audit gives an estimate in about three minutes, and the process priority scorer helps you decide what to fix first.

What goes wrong when assessments are copied and edited?

The same few problems come up. A hazard that matters for this location is missing because the template did not need it. A control measure is mentioned in the text but not actually listed, so nobody checks it is in place. A named operative's competence record expired months ago and nobody looked. And when an assessment is updated, the old version is overwritten, so it is hard to show what was in force on the day something happened.

What does a rebuilt risk assessment process include?

It is built on your own library of assessments, procedures and the hazards and controls your business already uses.

• Drafted from the job. The job details, location, activities and people are taken from the request, and a first draft is assembled from the closest approved assessments and procedures in your library.
• Hazards covered. The draft is checked against the hazards your library associates with those activities and that location, and any gaps are flagged.
• Controls listed. Each hazard must have its control measures set out. A hazard without one, such as a missing control for work at height, is held.
• Competence in date. Operatives named for the job are checked against your training and competence records, and expired records are flagged with the person and the record concerned.
• Reviewed and signed off. Anything held goes to a reviewer with the reason. A named person reviews every assessment and signs it off before it is issued.

Issued versions and every change are kept in the audit trail, with who reviewed and who signed off.

How does the work change for supervisors and reviewers?

Supervisors describe the job once rather than editing an old document line by line. Reviewers spend their time on the parts that need judgement, because the draft arrives with the gaps already identified: the missing control, the hazard not covered, the operative whose record has lapsed. Health and safety leads can see which assessments are waiting, which were held and why, and which version was issued for each job. When a client or an inspector asks for the assessment behind a piece of work, it is there with its history.

Which businesses is this for?

Businesses that send people to carry out work in buildings, plant rooms and client premises, where every job needs a suitable assessment before it starts. Facilities management providers delivering maintenance across client estates are the clearest case. Property and asset managers commissioning works, and engineering and environmental consultancies sending staff to sites and plant, follow the same pattern. It pairs naturally with inspection records and compliance evidence.

How is the risk assessment process rebuilt?

Scoping gathers your library, your procedures, a sample of recent assessments and your competence records, and walks through how an assessment is requested, drafted, checked and issued today with the people who do it. The build assembles drafts and checks from that material and is tested on real jobs. During a parallel run your reviewers compare each draft and its flags with the assessment they would have written. It goes live only once your health and safety lead signs it off, every assessment is still signed off by a named person, and support continues under the subscription. The time each stage takes is set at scoping.