Providing the health and safety of employees is one of the important features of contemporary workplaces. Workplace accidents occur annually, resulting in injury and expense to organizations. The accidents highlight the need for a more contemporary and forward-thinking system of workplace safety. This is precisely the central issue of HIRA (Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment). HIRA is focused on safety practices that lay emphasis on prevention, preparedness, and fostering a proactive safety culture at all levels of the organization. The blog discusses the HIRA safety process, its components, and how it assists in managing workplace hazards.
What is HIRA?
HIRA stands for Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment. HIRA is a systematic and proactive approach to identifying potential risks and assessing all associated risks. Conducting a hazard assessment is the most important component of occupational health and safety management systems, such as ISO 45001. HIRA is focused towards preventing workplace hazards from occurring before incidents have taken place. HIRA audits, once implemented and integrated into safety management systems, help enhance workplace safety, productivity and sense of responsibility in the organization.
What are the Methodologies for HIRA?
HIRA is a process approach that helps groups detect possible dangers in the workplace, examine the risks associated with them, and implement effective control measures. It’s so much of a trusted map that helps you navigate through the potential hazards of work life.HIRA encompasses hazard identification and risk assessment, respectively. The first step is to identify the potential risks within a process, while the second is to assess the process-related risk based on specific assessment factors.
1. Data Collection with Hazard Identification
Risk identification is the bare minimum requirement for a successful HIRA, according to safety precautions. In this case, clear emphasis is laid on physical inspections of equipment and handling activities of the workspace areas and processes. This, for the sake of realizing potential risks in terms of human health and safety.
It is crucial that organizations identify and acknowledge all the risks that the employees and the organization might face while conducting operations. The risks vary significantly in the type and appearance. It is therefore prudent to acknowledge anything that seems to be deviating or displaying unusual behaviour. In practice, this offers the acknowledgement of many forms of hazards, including physical, mechanical, electrical, fire and explosion, thermal, radiological, acoustic, and vibrational.
Among various sectors, HIRA can be adapted to meet the specific needs of your industry. Whether you’re in manufacturing, healthcare, or construction, applying the principles of hazard identification and risk control plays an important role in creating safer working environments. Each industry presents distinct challenges, but HIRA provides a versatile framework to tackle those challenges effectively.
2. Risk Management
The risk assessment is done against some risk criteria. At this point, the assessment starts by laying down the way the harmful events cause these effects. These effects are quite often linked with people’s safety, disruption of the environment and/or damage/production loss. In some cases, reputational impact may also be included in the assessment if based on required.
Risk assessment is how identified hazardous risks are weighed in terms of severity, likelihood, and other such considerations. Through this, risk assessment is a question of whether such hazards are low-risk or high-risk hazards. It can be applied in the implementation of three ways: qualitative, quantitative, and semi-quantitative. It is usual for one type of risk assessment to be complemented with another assessment to enhance the level of accuracy.
Why Implement HIRA?
The implementation of Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment HIRA in industrial practice involves active changes at both high and low levels. At the high level, this typically relates to management control and the overall attitude of management towards these principles. Low-level management focuses on specific contributions and controls, such as the conformity of particular departments within the industry.
Risk rating may be low, medium or high. Low risk generally means that the risk is acceptable and no diminution of the risk is necessary. Medium risk generally means that some procedure of handling must be put in place to reduce the risk. If there is a red situation, there has to be immediate action taken to stop the hazard. In an effort to reduce the risk, steps can be outlined for the party responsible to follow up and implement. The responsible party should also show evidence of follow-up of steps in writing.
High level
HIRA involves developing and executing a safety plan based on initial identification, assessment, and analysis. For this to be achieved, it must be announced among the authorities that make decisions that it is what the organization is aiming for and is dedicated to continuing to follow. Its implementation success thus entails strong disciplines that can justify and convince people on senior management levels that HIRA is vital and relevant to business.
Low level
When it has been decided that HIRA shall be conducted, it implies that concerned departments and sub-departments shall be informed about it.
For smooth implementation of HIRA and correct positioning of control measures, it means including engineering, administrative and operational staff. All of these people should be in a combined capacity to organise what action and control measures are required to be implemented. For example, this translates to evaluation of need for personal protective equipment, Permit To Work (PTW), new regulations and policies for operations etc. Ongoing observation, evaluation and reviews
To ensure successful and dynamic HIRA implementation, of utmost importance is the evaluation of previous actions and changes within the business. Ideally, this is achieved by observing and reviewing how control effectiveness and safety measures are performing.
Conclusion
An effective HIRA is crucial for maintaining a high level of safety and efficiency in a workplace. In some cases, implementation of HIRA with target-oriented control measures can make a life-saving difference. The methodology for a HIRA circulates two principles: 1) Hazard identification and 2) Risk assessment.
Identifying hazards is about process risks, equipment risks and/or risks related to the influence of the human factor. In this phase, potential risks are spotted through physical inspections and/or deviations in documentation, e.g., deficiencies in handling procedures or similar. The second part involves assessing risks from the hazard identification part. In this phase, the identified hazards are assessed with regard to various impacts, such as human safety, environmental disturbance and asset damage/loss of production. The hazardous events are further analysed by ranking the risk. If needed, actions are stated for the responsible party to manage and later prove in writing for completion and action close-out.
By following a comprehensive hazard identification and risk assessment process, organizations can reduce the risk of accidents, injuries, and environmental damage. The simplest way to execute this is by following a step-by-step method, often presented as a checklist.
