Many years ago, I was part of a team involved in undertaking a risk assessment across a region which was incurring multiple fatalities. The team came to the view that, a key step in the process of assessing hazards needs to include a process for considering what factors specific to the assessment site are liable to increase the level of risk.
An analysis of past fatal accidents revealed that in addition to the primary hazard there were frequently other factors that contributed to accidents occurring. These we referred to as Vulnerability Enhancing Factors and they included the following:
- Non-routine activities during:
- Production, e.g. de-blocking of equipment.
- Repair and maintenance, e.g. falling from a height due to poor accessibility of equipment to be repaired, work carried out in a confined space, welding, etc.
- Construction, e.g. falling from a height due to poor scaffolding.
- Transfer of plant.
- Innovation projects — Introducing new work methods, tools, equipment, etc.
- Abnormal work times, e.g. weekend and night shifts.
- Technical incompetence — Organisational delayering resulting in inexperienced personnel managing a wide portfolio of risk.
- Closure announcement of site or department affecting morale.
- Complexity of plant (process and/or layout) affecting the individual employee as well as communication within the organisation.
- Product change-overs, which might increase operational complexity.
- Contractors — unskilled or incompetent contractors, or sub-standard equipment.
- New Employees and Temporary Workers — unskilled, no safety induction, unfamiliar with tasks, process, safety programmes.
- Newly acquired companies — poor safety management systems.
- Remoteness of site — lack of structured safety controls
- Industrial relations — poor working relationships, legal requirements, etc.
- No legislation/regulation — no legal pressure to implement safety systems.
An assessment of vulnerability enhancing factors can complement the risk assessment process by ensuring that factors beyond the hazard are considered.