Environmental Risk Assessment and Management

risk management what is risk management okay risk management it's a system of record in assessing risk with the overall goal of reducing that risk to an acceptable level and you do that by implementing measures to him to minimize that risk risk management is composed of four parts one it's the the hazard identification going and identifying your source of risk what's going to cause the problem as a pain characterize document those sources and and start documenting those second process is analyzing those hazards and then starting looking at the likelihood of that occurring and the consequence of that third we need to start looking at control measures how we're going to control that risk and prevent that outcome from occurring and the fourth process is reviewing those control measures once we've put that in place to see whether now with those measures in place is that risk which is what we called residual risk is that residual risk acceptable to the company now and if it's not we need to put more measures in place the risk management process can be summarized in the diagram that we've got below here and I'll just run you through it quickly initially we're going to identify the hazards through a series of processes but often consultation get into the workplace walk around look at what's going wrong talk with people or whatnot in the center what's going wrong but what could go wrong and identify those hazards document them down and then move across in to step two where you're looking at assessing those risks and we'll go into that assessment process in a minute and looking at a frequency there or the likelihood of that risk occurring or that has it occurring and the consequence if that wants to occur step three we're going to go into the controlling those risks putting in mitigation measures to try and manage that thing minimize that risk or outcome and and and make have a minimal sort of impact on the environment that we possibly can and step four we're going to be going to and reviewing our control measures to make sure that now we're left with a residual risk that is acceptable to the company hazard identification before we go and look at how to identify hazard let's look at what that what has it is so the definition an environmental hazard is a source and that can be a substance estate an event which has got the potential to threaten the surrounding natural environment and or have a potential to threaten people's health for example things such as an effort release erosion resource depletion pollution with sedimentation or chemicals the natural disasters storms earthquakes all of those sorts of things they are a source and therefore they're defined as a hazard so how do we go about identifying these sorts of hazards within the workplace the best way of going about it is to go to and with consultation and getting a thorough understanding of that process of that facility of whatever that company is doing you need to understand that intricately so you can look at what sources are in those processes which could pose a threat to the natural environment around there to go in to looking at the definition of a risk as opposed to a hazard because a lot of people get these two mixed up the risk is the possibility that harm might occur when exposed to a hazard so think about that because you will see them mixed around and use I suppose interchangeably almost but the hazard is the source the risk is the possibility of that harm we must start looking at risk analysis and how we go about that process so to assist in the analysis and the qualitative risk assessments we generally will use the following formula and that is consequence times likelihood equals risk okay moving into risk analysis with our formula that we've covered risk equals likelihood times consequence or likelihood could be frequency or the possibility the consequence can be severity or similar sorts of words but here we'll look at the likelihood and we'll go through a typical rating scale so looking at this piece the table below whether a rating of 5 going down to 1 and so we'll start at the bottom at 1 not their likelihood of something occurring which is rare and people can and do put a percentage on there I haven't put a percentage in this example but you will come across different scales with a percentage so rare might be in that bottom 5% of occurring or even less 1% of occurring - it's unlikely that it's going to curve going to occur people can now I think they probably put 5 to 20% that's sort of a level of something occurring it's unlikely 3 it's possible that it could occur ok so that's up to that up through past 50% maybe up to 60% likely number 4 people can say I can it's if it's likely it's going to be 7080 possibly 85% it's likely to occur 5 almost certain ok 90 95 100 so that's the typical way of going about designing a rating scale consequence we'll look at the the typical consequence or severity scale and similar similarly to the previous the likelihood scale that we had before he's got a rating of 1 to 5 as well and it goes through negligible mild moderate severe and catastrophic and if you look there you'll go through and you can read for yourself the the different descriptions of possible impacts that can occur in this process it is very important to clearly define those different levels within that severity scale so I will just touch on it briefly a small localized environmental impact minor injuries no fines no downtime minor costs you'll notice in there that it's not just environmental because these risk assessments generally will cover far more than environmental risk they'll cover all risks within the company these severity scales we'll go through and I'll say from an environmental point of view we've got a localized environmental impact they'll be clearly establish the parameters so that if an event occurs you can go back and refer to this table and say it falls into this scale we've got a mild event occurring in this case and then we can go through into internet using the next couple of steps where we go through a few tools you'll then be able to work out what that risk rating is for that for that hazard quantifying risk in this case we're going to use the risk matrix now I sort of indicated there are many ways to quantify risk and this is one way when this 5x5 matrix this is the most common form that you'll come across but yeah believe me you'll find in all sorts Apes and so you'll notice on on our 5x5 matrix which is on the left-hand side of the page on the side we've got the likelihood of something occurring and we've got the consequence across the top and that is an S scaled one down to five of which come out of the previous couple of slides that we've looked at on the right hand side it goes through with the color coding and shows the low risk the medium risk and the high risk and it has an action as assigned to that on the right-hand side of that little table now that will change depending on the company that you're working for or that you're there the situation that you're in different companies have their own and so you can go ahead you can replicate this you can use a very similar sort of a thing you can search the net and you can find any one of the thousands that are on there and use those however a lot of companies have their own and and I'll just walk you through what those colors mean now and how we use this risk matrix it's a simple note you'll see the numbers that are allocated throughout that matrix and you'll notice that they're simple a simple function of multiplication of what's on the on the on the x axis and the y axis on the other on the side and on what's a vertical and what's horizontal and and so if we go through the likelihood something that's got a likelihood of one occurring but a consequence of five gives us a risk rating of five something that's got a likelihood of four occurring with a consequence of three will give us a risk rating of 12 now what those numbers mean we move across to the table on the right-hand side where we can see down that risk rating we open the green on the top we've got a low risk and that's of anything less than four then in that medium risk rating we've got the four to ten and that high risk rating we've got anything above ten and as I just stated before this is all dependent on the company that you're working for however generally the areas indicated from one from one to three that are in the green that risk is considered acceptable to the company so if we've got an event or if we've got a hazard that we've done a risk assessment on and we've identified that it's got a risk rating of three it's got a likelihood of one so it's really unlikely to occur and but it's got a medium level sort of consequence because of that it gives us a a risk rating of three and we can look at that and think okay at this point in time this risk is acceptable to the company for this activity we don't need to go through any further mitigation processes we'll just monitor it as we go and there might be a supervisor on site who will monitor that risk be aware and make sure that that doesn't escalate however if that risk has a much higher likelihood that say it's got a likelihood of three and it's got a consequence level of three so it gives it that it gives us that risk rating of nine then we go through then we look in there we're in that yellow band so we look at what action do we take here or do we need to take that risk level a nine it's an unacceptable level of risk to the company so there is further mitigation required so when allowed to start an activity or that task or that process we need to go through further risk management abatement mitigation we need to go and put these processes in place to reduce that risk level down so that it then ends up going back into the green so in which case you will go through through a process of consultation and investigation looking into how you can reduce those risk assign those management measures to it and then you'll go back and you'll do a further risk assessment you'll come up with your residual risk rating which is what you do after you've audience after you've assigned your control measures and that residual risk rating we're hoping is going to end up in the green band however in a case where you can't get that risk down below four and so it remains in that yellow band there is that note on the bottom of there that it requires a manager approval to proceed so the company might accept that okay we've done absolutely everything within our means to reduce the risk to its minimum will escalate this level we'll give it to a manager that manager can sign off on it to say Oh Kailyn I agree we've done everything we can the company is now prepared to move forward that's acceptable and you can move forward with that however obviously if things are sitting in that high-risk band it's unacceptable to the company and you would need some serious risk of bateman management that would need to occur to reduce that down and I don't I can't think of any examples where a company these days would knowingly go through a process of risk assessment and then give a thumbs up for them to commence it's there would be a suicidal sort of process to undertake mind you that's I'm not saying it doesn't happen I don't know of any companies that do it but given needs it's up to that senior management within the company to make a decision of how they're going to progress any further if you do end up with something in that red band hopefully through that man the process of assigning control measures to it you can reduce your residual risk down to a level that's going to be either in the yellow or in the green and then that activity will be able to proceed the risk matrix okay so we've looked at the purpose of the risk of the risk matrix and now we know it's it's to standardize that at that process of assessing risks so that you can do it I can do it and that the bloke over there can do it and we're going to end up with roughly the same result that's very important for a system for animal environmental management system things need to be able to be duplicated so the more clear your procedures are and the more clear your definitions and descriptions are and using things such as a risk matrix with those couple of tables that we've just looked at the more likely things will be standard so we've defined the severity care categories or the consequence categories we have looked at the likelihood categories and we've gone through and discussed what's acceptable risk and we've discussed unacceptable risk and in that we'll also look at the residual risk that can be which falls back into that hopefully into the acceptable risk level the year and that that trigger for further management and that's important to make sure in your risk matrix you do have that trigger for further management in case you come up against something that's not standard okay tools for managing risk and this is what you'll see in the workplace so tools for managing risk within the workplace that you'll come across on a daily almost daily basis on some project definitely project sites so these tools are for managing and assessing and mitigating risk things such as the risk assessment table that we've just gone through but then there's also things that they call a job safety and environment assessment ojsc a originally that thenor was a safety document at a JSA and because those things are occurring out in the environment and that the safety procedures will became part of culture the environment has jumped in there as well and so that environmental assessment has also also it now occurs within those areas on some work sites they look they're a specific risk management software that and there are many many of them some companies will you larger companies will use that specific software where capture all risks and you'll have specific risk management meetings and go in and people will throw all the risks into the software and it all gets crunched and unmanaged from there but there are many different bits of software out there on the market you just need to be aware that they exist that you've got work method statements which are often called Safe Work method statements but here they have all sorts of different terms and yeah there's a SWOT analysis so for those who aren't aware what a SWOT analysis is that's just looking at strengths and weaknesses and opportunity and threats but now there's whole heap of other ones as well flow charts checklist standards and the list sort of goes on there are many tools out there for managing risk and the risk assessment table is just one that is very commonly used within the environmental field okay we're looking at the risk assessment table here and and I'll walk you through it as you're having a look at it we've got a couple of examples that I've placed on there and across the top we've got their headings so I'll just give you a quick run of the headings our tasks which are occurring that's down the left-hand side the hazards that have been identified from those tasks and then we're going to go through and here comes the I suppose the the part where we assess that risk we look at the likelihood and the consequence and that gives us a risk rating and that's color-coded which we can throw back into our matrix that we looked at earlier on and then we've got our mitigation measures our control measures that have been assigned to try and reduce that risk rating down and then we're going to redo our risk assessment taking into consideration that we've now got these measures in place and so that gives us our residual likelihood our residual consequence and the ultimate the residual risk rating and you'll note there that we've gone through the first risk assessment is one that is done without considering any controls and that's an important thing to note in this process one that first risk assessment you think okay if we were to go out there and just simply do this and I'll use the example that's there the so we're going to go to the chemical treatment of timber for in this case using the copper chromium arsenic mix where it goes in pressure in a chamber and treats the the timber for that protection against the termites or other sort of insects that might deteriorate or eat that that timber mold and then for wood rot and molds and fungi and that sort of thing that can deteriorate the integrity of that timber over time so that's the process we're talking about there and so one of the hazards that is identified in that process is a spill or release to the environment copper chromium and arsenic not desirable to release into the environment so we're not going to do it it's a hazard and so let's manage it so let's look at that the likelihood of it occurring if we don't have any measures in place the likelihood of someone having a bit of a spill while they're pouring and mixing and adding and putting it in it's fairly likely and over time it's going to happen so I've given it a five the consequence now if we go back looking at the the consequence rating of that we're not going to have a catastrophic sort of consequence over time and if lots and lots of people were doing doing that it it could end up being a catastrophic but in this case it's in a single you know we're only talking about assessing our activity so that consequence of spilling a highly toxic chemical is going to have a significant impact so I've given it a four and so therefore when you go through and you multiply that five and the four together it gives us a risk rating of twenty which sits us right up in that red band and if we remember back before that red band is an unacceptable risk to the company we don't know no companies that would allow that level of risk to occur without going and putting mitigation measures or in any case but you know we need to put mitigation measures in place so we've assigned a few mitigation measures there to help us reduce that level and so all the handling of that chemical is to be with an abundant area so it's going to be if it was spilt if we had someone making a terrible mess of themselves in there it would be spill it would all be contained it's not going to run out and it's a big bond so the likelihood then of any spill even just with that first mitigation measure the likelihood of that occurring now we've really significantly reduced any risk of that material being spilt outside there so we're going to have spill kits and response material equipment with a personnel trained and appropriate signage and we're going to have audits on our system to make sure that things aren't occurring outside and there's a whole heap more measures that we can look at putting in place but in going through that process we've really now reduced our likelihood of spill let's consider the consequence if that material was still spilled the result would be the same as before I couldn't reduce that residual consequence rating down if one of the measures in there we decided let's not use that material know that chemical let's go and get a substitute chemical which gives us the same result but it's a far less toxic chemical to the environment then we could go about reducing our residual consequence at this point in time I couldn't reduce that because that that chemical is still just as toxic as it was before if it was released into the environment it's still going to give me the same result all we've done with those measures there we reduced the likelihood of that spill getting out so we've got a lot for a likelihood now on residual likelihood of one and we've got a residual consequence of four and we multiply that out that gives us a residual risk rating of four in this case the company can go through and assess that risk and think okay we've put every measure we possibly can in place we need to use this chemical still for this reason so that's an acceptable risk to the company look at the second example let's say in a similar situation as well clearing of timber we're going to cause without any measures in place we're going to have injury mortality and current of wildlife likelihood of that if we're pushing timber down it's very likely and the consequence now here we're sort of looking at going back into our consequence rating tables the rating writing I could give that out of that was - I don't know no I'm not killing those various animals but when we start looking at on that overall scale it gives us a consequence of - so that five and two is that it's an unacceptable risk is the company prepared to accept that if we go ahead and smash timber and leave injured and maimed animals running around we're going to have a nasty public backlash so we're not expecting where if we only look at that that side of things we really we don't want to do it as well so for the company's point of view that's not acceptable let's put some measures in place so I've gone I've listed a few mitigation measures there in place and now we've come down and we've reduced our risk level they're down to an appropriate level and the company is now able to accept that level of risk in the residual risk rating and we can now move forward how to mitigate risk this process if we just think back into our risk assessment table is the process of assigning measures to reduce risk how do we get that information where do we get where we get all those those measures from here are a few examples we're going to obtain information and you can go looking for that information yourself and you can go and ask others and learn from what's around you but you're going to look at places that you can go looking include legislation and regulations licensed conditions industry guidelines and Australian standards all of those things will have and do state what needs to be in place for certain activities so for them to go ahead and they ultimately are control measures or mitigation measures so from your point of view you will need to consider that source and look at the Associated energy that's that's in that activity or that's with that hazard at that source you might go to place barriers up you might go to remove the hazard altogether for those sorts of things though an aryl in information that's already specified another example is going about complying with and or implementing company procedures so if you see if you're working with a system that's already in existence then those management plans should and absolutely should be going through and listing out measures that should be in place for certain activities if you're the person developing those plans then you might be able to look at what other companies do go and have a look through other documents and see what's been done before and that falls into the next part of research researching other projects and how they managed risk what people have implemented throughout the industry can become the benchmark or an industry standard and you can gauge yourself on that you know are you going above and beyond that what other people have done that set you above that industry standard so there are a couple of examples of going about finding how to mitigate risk but in today's workplace as well you'll generally find people who doing those activities will already know how to manage those hazards and reduce them to a certain degree talk with them talk with experienced operators and pose questions say okay we've got this risk here there's a hazard from this activity what can we do to stop it talk with people I know you'll be surprised the ideas and things that people can present within the process of managing risks there there is a hierarchy of controls and it's something that we need to apply when we are going through the process of assigning mitigation measures so measures for treating risk and I start the first one as being the most optimal or the most preferred and the last one number four has been the least preferred we need to try and do one wherever we can and and do four only if we have to so avoiding that risk upfront is obviously taking out that activity altogether do we need to really do this if we don't need to do it let's not do it because it poses a big risk and it gets rid of the problem altogether that's not always possible so we might look at reducing a likelihood of harm and all the likelihood of harmful consequences by modifying that source okay so let's look at putting in controls at the source that might prevent the either reduce the likelihood or was used the consequence of that sort of a thing occurring that might be things like putting in sediment fence to try and catch sediment and prevent it from going down into the creek or looking at putting in erosion control measures further up the hill to prevent the help of dirt from moving in the first place so reducing the likelihood of harmful consequences so the third point then is reducing the consequences by modifying susceptibility and/or increasing resilience so that's talking about looking at the receiving environment okay so it's something that's far less common modifying the susceptibility but you know in in the case of dealing with Millie's okay we might look at putting measures in at the sensitive receptor site or providing compensation for those sorts of things and then we go on to number four which is by retaining the risk and accepting that about planning to manage its consequences sort of like asking forgiveness instead of permission and it's far less recommended option and when one om one I wouldn't necessarily say that it's the optimal one in most situations here's a risk matrix that I've used on a project before you'll notice it's a little bit different to the one that I've shown you before it's got an additional color in there indicating another control band and that was just particular for the company that I was working for at the time and then you'll notice down the bottom there it goes through an explanation of the this health and safety levels of all the categories of consequence and the environment it goes through all of those that defines the illegal and then also the likelihood again it clearly articulates each band and so that you know where if an event occurs where it's going to sit in there and you can easily assign that risk call that likelihood or that consequence you can easily assign it a number I'll let you have a read through that and and we can discuss that further in the class here's an example of a risk assessment table that I've used on a project and I want to present it as a little bit different to the other example that we've looked at in this case the hazard that was identified and actually this is a good example of where the client in this case already had set terminologies that they that they had within their system and so you'll notice that hazard and risk are used a little bit differently in the way in which I've used in the examples prior and the reason for that was simply because of the company procedures however in I would prefer how and recommend that everyone used that other process that we've nominated but if we look in here the hazard or in this case I would call it the task that was good being connectivity that's being conducted is the clearing in a marine area and I will said that the risk or the hazard that hasn't occurring there was the the loss and the fragmentation of the littoral vegetation within that marine environment now we've gone through and we've done a look at the likelihood and the impact and and then the risk rating and within but with a risk rating of 12 the thing they are on a note is that the likelihood is 3 whereas previously we were able to reduce the likelihood of that thing occurring we've gone ahead and we've put a heap of measures in place acknowledging that that activity was going to go through there and it would result in a loss and fragmentation health fragmenting of the littoral vegetation so the likelihood doesn't change even though we've gone in portal those measures in place so we've still ended up with a residual likelihood of 3 however in this case they've excited that they've reduced the impact or the consequence that's going to occur to it they're actually not going to take out those marine vegetation or marine plants they're going to instead they're going to trim them and and leave them in place so that they can grow back once that projects been through in that area in this case this is for a pipeline and and so here we've been able to go through and reduce our residual impact or our residual risk down to a very low level but that likelihood was still going to occur you'll find that the your ability to be able to reduce the impact or the consequence is not as common the ability to be able to reduce the likelihood however this is a good example for you to have a look where we haven't been able to do that in this case and we've ended up come out with an acceptable risk level and go ahead and do that activity here's another example from that same risk assessment table on that project and in this case now we're looking at the hazard the activity being the disruption of Bank and bit stability as we go to and conduct a pipeline crossing and so we're crossing a creek in this case so we're looking at risks there of being increased Bank and better ocean due to exposure mobilisation of contaminants and soils in doing that risk assessment there we've identified the likelihood and the impact and was grading we've also now signed our various medication measures in there and we've been able to come up with a very acceptable rating at the end of that process residual likelihood of at all occurring of one and the residual impact of two so there's in in this case of going and putting these sorts of measures in place we've dramatically reduced that residual risk rating down to a very acceptable level now I'll put this in here for you to see the sorts of measures that can be put in to this risk assessment table these measures as you can see are quite detailed and they fit perfectly with him a management plan be a procedure or all the other sorts of documents that may exist in that project and that's where they've come from in depending on which was done in this case this risk rating was done the risk assessment was conducted first we write down all of those different measures we found them found whatever measures we could from other documents and legislation and and just from experience in talking with experienced personnel on the project we identified and write all of those mitigation measures down and this becomes the foundation for we can go our way and we've more or less got our procedure written we just now we can open open up our computer and type in we're going to when conducting a creek crossing this is how we do it so my my point is to be able to vary in these documents if you do them correctly they will make your life a lot easier going forward in the development of documents in this particular case I want you to look at the fact of where we've ended up in our residual risk rating as being six being the lowest that we could reduce it down to we've gone ahead we put a whole heap of mitigation measures in place there to try and reduce the impact our initial risk assessment rating of 12 and we're going to and placed all of those measures in place we've conducted our residual risk assessment and within whether residual risk rating of six okay that's the best we could get out of that situation and so that would have required going forward to the company in accordance with their their procedures and talking with senior management to say I came this is this is where we've ended up are we prepared to go ahead with this level of risk is there anything else that the company could do to manage risk in this situation and in this particular case various industry experts we're able to look through there and decide that okay we've put everything that we possibly can in place there's nothing else we can do within our scope of work or within our power and therefore that's a risk that the company is prepared to take to move forward in this process in this final slide we've gone through and we have identified our hazard we've conducted our risk assessment I've identified a likelihood our impact and risk rating assign and risk rating we've assigned a lot of mitigation measures in there to try and reduce the risk that will occur and we've ended up with probably as it's a fairly standard result in this process now we have been able to reduce our likelihood but we haven't been able to reduce our impact and that's generally what you find on most risk assessments it's it's far easier to put measures in place to reduce the likelihood and it's just a bit less common to be able to reduce the impact generally so in this case we've got our residual likelihood of the of the risk it's been reduced down to one the residual impact has remained in a three which is what we identified before if that activity goes ahead and if that even with all of those things in place it's still possible if it day of that if that has a risk occur we will still end up with that same impact so therefore we've ended up with a residual risk rating of three so that pretty much sums up what we need to cover with in risk assessment it's a very big area there's a lot to learn in it and and you will continue to develop in this area the more and more you work in it but as a bit of a quick run-through of what we've already covered we've looked at what risk management is we've gone over the components of risk management things like the hazards what as a hazard we looked at risk and what it how do you multiply out that risk and the likelihood the consequence the mitigation measures and residual risk cover all of those sorts of things well we looked at how to quantify risk we've covered tools such as the risk matrix and other tools for managing risk and the large choice that exists out there within the the workplace there are we've looked at how to manage risks how to assign measures to manage those risks who have looked at a hierarchy of control in there and the process by which we need to follow for assigning those controls and then finally we went through a couple of examples from industry of of a real risk assessment that's being used on a project

Channel: Graham Ashford

Views: 18,417

Rating: 4.8227849 out of 5

Keywords: ENS223, environmental risk assessment and management, environmental risk matrix, environmental risk mitigation, residual risk, likelyhood, consequence

Id: NCPIgAcR2SI

Length: 41min 40sec (2500 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2017