Risk Assessment Training in South Africa

A risk assessment is a process that helps identify potential hazards and determine how likely they are to occur and how severe their consequences would be if they did occur. Risk assessments are used in many different contexts including occupational safety and health, environmental protection, product safety testing, etc.

The goal of performing a risk assessment is to reduce the likelihood that a hazardous event will occur or minimize its impact if it does occur.

This can be accomplished by reducing exposure to the hazard (e.g., using personal protective equipment like gloves or masks) or removing sources of the hazard from the environment (e.g., replacing toxic chemicals with less harmful ones). A good risk assessment should include all three approaches: primary, secondary, and tertiary mitigation strategies.

A risk assessment typically contains four sections:
1) An introduction that defines key terms and outlines what will be discussed; 2) an overview of the topic area;
3) An analysis of each identified hazard based on its likelihood of occurring and its severity if it does occur;
4) Recommendations for how to address each identified hazard based on its likelihood of occurring and its severity if it does occur; 5) examples of how this process can be applied in real-world situations.