By: Chris Coetzee of OHSS Consulting
All plumbers have their ups and down, their highs and lows as well as those days that you just want to burn your clothes after a job. It’s to be expected – not every job is the same. But you continually lift yourself up and keep your quality high, because you know that this is what sets you apart from the competitors.
Chris Coetzee. ©Plumbing Africa
Knowing that jobs change constantly and that you try to prepare for the unexpected, we would like to remind you of another variation of circumstances within your operations – C.R.A.P.
No, we are not trying to bum you out, nor are we trying to make light of health and safety, or risks. So, what are we trying to do? We want you to remember this information, and what better way than to make it something humorous and different, it will surely stick out. Well, we thought so in any case.
Let’s get into what we mean by C.R.A.P: Continuous Risk Assessment Programme. Why do we need to bring this to your attention? For one thing, we started off by stating that things change, situations are never the same, job to job. Understanding that our circumstances change rapidly and often without warning means that we do truly need to “Be Prepared”.
In what way can you be prepared for the ever-changing health and safety situations you and your team will find yourselves in? To start off, let us first understand the nature of the Risk Assessment and its impact on the overall health and safety of an organisation. Risk management is a management function with the objective of protecting people, assets, environment and income by avoiding or minimising the potential for loss from pure risks, and the provision of funds to recover losses.
The purpose of every plan is to facilitate the attainment of an organisation’s objectives, mission, and goal. Safety is a goal, which organisations must achieve. Since it’s the foundation of risk management, a risk assessment is the most up to date information on what could harm us and how the effects of risks could lead to injuries or loss. Maintaining a risk assessment then is vital to have the clear knowledge of what is creating incidents and accidents within our organisation.
Risk Assessments also give clear and specific safety controls to avoid the nasty consequences of hazards. Knowing these controls is one thing, ensuring they are implemented and monitored in another. And this is why we have the “Continuous Risk Assessment Programme”, it is designed to assist us in ensuing that we have the best available information, instructions, training and supervision to complete jobs in a manner that is not only safe, but also promotes health and welfare.
Senior executive staff must make it clear that they attach the same importance to such a risk prevention and control programme as to any other organisational objectives. Only then will it be possible to have an effective programme.
The purpose of conducting continuous risk assessments is to:
- Identify hazards with the purpose of immediately treating significant risks;
- Gather information to feed back to Issue-based Risk Assessment and
- Gather information to feed back to Baseline Risk Assessment.
A continuous risk assessment should be conducted on a continuous basis in the work environment. It is a powerful and important form of assessment and should take place continually, as an integral part of day-to-day management. In continuous Risk Assessment, the emphasis is on day-to-day hazard awareness, through Risk Assessment, and immediate risk treatment.
Continuous assesment is key. Image by Freepik.com
In developing hazard awareness, memory joggers such as inspection checklists, pre-use checklists, and critical part and paths checklists, can be produced from management controls that are a product of issue-based Risk Assessment. Planned Task Observations could also be conducted on an ongoing basis.
These types of Continuous Risk Assessments must be performed at an operational level, where the system, process and activities are monitored on a continuous basis by the operational management and first line supervisors. It must not be sophisticated and should mainly be conducted by first line supervisors.
Formal training in this regard is essential. The main emphasis is on “hazard awareness through hazard identification”.
IOPSA has many templates of these types of Continuous Risk Assessments and will make them available to all plumbers who would like to implement a Continuous Risk Assessment Programme within their organisation. There are:
- DSTIs – Daily Supervisory Task Instructions
- PTOs – Planned Task Observations
Here is a quick overview of each of the above templates: DSTIs – Daily Supervisory Task Instructions are completed on a daily basis before any work stats. As a team, each employee guided by the supervisor theoretically goes over that specific day’s job and answers these questions:
- Current job – list main steps of task?
- What are the hazards – job and environment?
- List of controls required\implemented?
Now they have a list of steps they need to follow, the information on potential risks and what to do to keep themselves safe.
Continuous improvement. PDCA
You may think, well isn’t this just the same information that is on the issue-based risk assessment? In some cases, you will be right, but often we find that due to change in circumstances, new or overlooked hazards and risks are identified and can now be mitigated. This information is vital to a risk assessors who may not be available on every site and at every job being performed. This information is then fed back to the issue-based risk assessment to be reviewed and amended if necessary.
The PTOs – Planned Task Observations – are a tool used by a supervisor at regular intervals and is designed to give the supervisor insight into “HOW” work is being carried out. The document is sued at a site where work is being undertaken by a team. Using the information received from the issue based and continuous risk assessments the supervisor now ‘observes’ the task being performed and answers a few pre-determined questions and also gives comments on observations of the task. The goal? To identify if the ‘Steps’ outlined are the correct order, safety manner of working or if adjustments need to be made to ensure effectiveness, efficiency and most of all, continuous health, and safety implementation.
All of the above forms a part of the bigger P.D.C.A | Plan. Do. Check and Act. Continuous Improvement strategy for Occupational Health and Safety – want to know more about it? Stay tuned to Plumbing Africa Magazine for next month’s article on PDCA – The ‘how to’ guide.
