L1 Topic 4: Risk Controls

If we go back a few slides, I introduced the concept of the energy model at the top, and we've then built it into this slightly more complex but far more user-friendly model underneath it.

We've talked about hazards, activities, outcomes, and harm, and you've demonstrated your understanding of those things. We've also considered the concept of risk that links between the two things. The one thing we've neglected so far is controls.

So, what we're going to do is we're just going to talk about controls for a few minutes, and then we'll get you to bring this whole thing together. We'll talk about the four separate elements: hazards, activities, outcomes, harm, controls, and risk.

Controls are the most important things in safety, without a doubt. It's the controls that stop the bad stuff from happening, that stop the victim from occurring. It's all about the controls. They're more accurately known as risk controls, and they are things that reduce the risk.

In the case of safety, they reduce the risk of the hazard causing the outcome or harm while conducting that activity. Wherever possible, it's preferable to write controls as an action or as an object.

"Wear a seat belt" as opposed to just "seat belt," because I'm sure you'll agree that wearing a seat belt is a far more effective control than just having a seat belt. So, if we can be a bit descriptive in our controls, it adds significant value.

Let's just look at some examples of controls: guarding – great control, wearing gloves – good control, edge protection – very good, drive defensively – again, it's written as an action, and use handrail.

Now, one of the best things about writing controls like this is they mean something, and we don't get tied up in the safety jargon that you often hear. We're telling people to do things.

We're describing it as it is in language that people will understand, and that is what this approach to safety is all about – building understanding and engagement.

So here we got the model. We know this model really, really well now. We understood the principles behind it, and you've done some examples. What we're keen to do now is to add in the risk control.

It was one of the key elements of safety, probably the most important. How does that look like when we add it all together?

Well, this is what it does. So, a control reduces risk. As you can see here, the hazard and the activity, there's a set risk of that outcome and harm happening. If we put a control in place, it reduces that risk. That's how simple safety really is. We don't need to make it any more complex than this in the first instance.

I'll go through a few more examples in the next few slides. So, we've got an example here: vehicle and driving, the hazard and activity, the outcome is a crash and injury.

I'm sure you all agree if you wear a seat belt, you reduce the risk of the injury from occurring. It's really simple. But are you happy with just that?

So, what we've done is we've reduced the risk from a larger risk to a slightly smaller risk by wearing a seat belt. But are you happy with that? Some people may say yes, but the majority of people would say no. There's other things we need to reduce the risk further.

So, are there other controls that we can put in place? And of course, there is. One simple control would be to drive defensively. So, if we wear a seat belt and drive defensively, we've reduced the risk even further.

And this is the principle of risk management – all we try and do is put more things in place, so we reduce the risk that's left over, the residual risk, you may have heard it, to a level that we're comfortable with.

So, if we wear a seat belt, drive defensively, is that enough? Possibly not. There are more things. What about the vehicle? Does the vehicle need some safety features on it?

Does it need to be designed to a certain standard? All of these things add to reducing the risk further. And that's what we're trying to do – to reduce the risk of that hazard during the activity causing the harm that we've defined.

Let's look at a few more examples. I hope you found those three activities interesting and informative. Thanks very much for your time. This is the end of module one. I look forward to seeing you in module two.