Risk Management: Tools/Assets to Identify Potential Hazards

A. Step 1 -Identify Hazards: A hazard is a condition with the potential to cause injury, illness, or death of personnel; damage to or loss of personnel, equipment and property; or operations degradation. A hazard may also be a situation or event that can result in degradation of capabilities or operational failure.

1) Use the following tools/assets to identify potential hazards:

• Experience and other experts.

• Regulations and policies.

• Risk assessment matrices.

• Readiness assessments.

• Cause and effect diagrams.

• Change analysis. .

• Logic diagrams.

• Training assessments.

• After-action reviews(AARs).

B. Step 2 -Assess the Hazards: This process is systematic in nature and uses charts, codes and numbers to present a methodology to assess probability and severity to obtain a standardized level of risk. The five-step (RM) process is a method for expressing and depicting a normally

intuitive and experience-based thought process.

1) Hazards are assessed and risk are assigned in terms of probability and severity of

adverse impact of an event/occurrence. This step considers the risk or likelihood of an

event or incident adversely impacting operations, capabilities, people, equipment, or property. “What are the odds (probability) of something going wrong and what is the effect (severity) of the incident if it does occur?”

2) All participants should be aware of the following sub-steps involved with the Assess the Hazard Step 2:

• Assess the probability of the event or occurrence.

• Estimate the expected result or severity of an event or occurrence.

• Determine the specified level of risk for a given probability and severity using the standard risk assessment matrix.(See figure 3).

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...itions, or events.

2) Supervise: Supervision is a form of control measure. In step 5 of (RM), supervision becomes an integral part of the process. Supervision ensures subordinates understand how, when, and where controls are implemented. It also ensures that controls are implemented, monitored, and remain in place. Situational awareness is a critical component of the (RM) process when identifying hazards. Situational awareness is equally important in supervision. It ensures that complacency, deviation from standards, or violations of policies and risk controls are not allowed to threaten success. Hazards that are present can then be mitigated. Supervision and oversight provides supervisors/managers and department heads with the situational awareness necessary to anticipate, identify, and assess any new hazards and to develop or modify controls as necessary.