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INDUSTRIAL
SAFETY
Dr. Noura A. Nouraldin
➢ The Responsibility and Accountability of
Managers
• In law, the organization is responsible for ensuring acceptable health and
safety standards at work.
• Therefore, managers at all levels of the organization have a legal duty to

manage health and safety within the organization they have control over.
This is true of senior managers, middle managers, and junior managers,
whatever level you may be at within the organization.
Managers
• If you have any degree of management control within the organization,
you have health and safety responsibilities for those things under your
control.
• It is important to recognize that, as a manager, you are responsible for the

health and safety of the workplace and workforce in your areas. Health
and safety is not the responsibility of the health and safety department or the
health and safety consultant; they are there to give advice.
Managers
CASE STUDY
✓ A manager was fined a total of £10,000 after a 37-year-old worker suffered 90
per cent burns and died, when the aerosol canisters he was crushing caught fire.
The manager instructed the worker to crush the canisters in a metal baler. The
canisters were full of an extremely flammable material but were not labelled.
When the baler was activated, a canister caught fire, engulfing the worker in
flames. Two companies involved in the accident were also prosecuted and fined a
total of £430,000 and ordered to pay £60,000 in costs.
➢ Managers will usually be responsible for
ensuring that:
• The organization’s health and safety policy is implemented in their working areas.
• Appropriate safety equipment is supplied, properly maintained, and used at all times.
• All their staff are adequately trained and competent to carry out the work allotted to
them.
• No work carried out by contractors will place staff, visitors, or the public at risk.
• Arrangements are made for accident reporting, first aid, fire precautions, etc. in
their areas.
➢ Managers will usually be responsible for
ensuring that:
• All accidents that happen in their areas are properly investigated and
preventive actions are implemented as required.
• All relevant legal records are made and kept.
• Where staff training needs are identified, that training is provided.
“If you do not already have a list of your specific health and safety
responsibilities, then this may be a matter to take up with your
organization”
➢ Defining ‘Hazard’, ‘Hazardous Event’ and
‘Risk’
• In order to understand the process of risk assessment there are some key
words and phrases that we need to understand because they have quite
specific meanings.
• Hazard: Something with the potential to cause harm. Everyday examples of
hazards would include:

‘Risk’
❑ Examples of hazards would include:
• A moving car on the road - if you are a pedestrian trying to cross that road.
• Electricity - running through the wires of your kettle or hairdryer.
• A sharp knife in the kitchen.
• The slippery floor of your bath or shower.
• An aggressive dog.
• Carrying the shopping out of the car and into your house.
‘Risk’
• If we turn our attention to work, there are thousands of hazards that might
exist in the workplace, depending on the nature of the workplace and the
activities being carried out for work purposes. Typical examples of
workplace hazards would include:
✓ Electricity, fire, moving vehicles, manual handling, slip and trip hazards,
falling objects, working at height, noise, chemicals, biological agents,
➢ Hazardous Event
• The moving car is a hazard but it does not cause harm until you step out in
front of it and it hits you.
• The slippery floor is a hazard but it does not cause harm until you walk
across it and slip.
• The corrosive chemical is a hazard but it does not cause harm until you spill
it accidentally on your skin.
Hazardous Event: An incident which occurs when a hazard is realized”
➢ Risk
• Risk is the combination of two factors, likelihood and consequence.
• There is no such thing as ‘zero risk’. No activity in life is risk-free. Everything
that you do at work and at home exposes you to hazards that create risk. You can
be killed or seriously injured by hazards in every room of your house, in your
garden, or traveling to and from work. Work is no exception.
• Working safely is not about creating a risk-free workplace since such a thing
can’t exist. Instead, working safely is about recognizing and then managing the
risks in the workplace and work activities.
➢ Definition of The Term Risk Assessment
• Risk assessment is the careful examination of anything in your workplace

that could cause people to suffer injury or harm. It involves the simple
process of identifying hazards, evaluating risks, and identifying controls to
avoid or minimize those risks.
• Risk assessment is a legal requirement in workplaces and has been for many
years.
➢ Definition of the Terms Likelihood and
Consequence
• So risk is the combination of two factors - the likelihood of a hazardous

event occurring in combination with the consequence of that event.
▪ Likelihood – how likely is it that a particular hazardous event will occur and
cause harm? You might call this the chance or probability.
▪ Consequence – what is the likely foreseeable harm? How bad would it be?
This is the outcome of the hazardous event.
Consequence
• These two factors combine to give us the degree or level of risk. We might
then identify the level of risk using words such as low risk or high risk.
Because risk depends on those two factors, reducing either the likelihood
or the consequence or both will also reduce the level of risk. Likewise,
increasing either or both of these two factors will increase the level of risk.
Consequence
• For example, a responsible adult making a cup of tea might be described as a
low-risk activity since they are unlikely to spill boiling water on themselves
and, if they did, it is likely to be of little consequence since they will know to
run cold water over the scald immediately.
• But a three-year-old child trying to do the same activity might be described
as high risk, since they are far more likely to spill boiling water over
themselves and if they did the consequences are likely to be very severe.
“Exactly the same ideas are used in the workplace when thinking about risk”
Consequence
▪ Both likelihood and consequence will be influenced by a whole
range of factors. Factors that might influence likelihood include:
✓ Where are the stairs?
✓ How many members of staff use those stairs at that time of day?
✓ What is the surface of the stairs made of?
✓ Will the cleaner put warning signs up?

✓ Will members of staff be able to see the wet stairs and the warning signs?
Consequence
❑ Factors that might influence consequence
include:
• Will staff be using the handrail?
• How many stairs might they fall down?
• The presence of vulnerable people who might be more severely injured
by a fall on stairs (e.g. elderly people who have brittle bones).
➢ Risk Assessment Process and Risk Rating
Systems
▪ Risk assessments are a legal requirement under the management of health
and safety at work regulations 1999. These Regulations require that:
• a “suitable” risk assessment is carried out

• the assessment is recorded if the organization has five or more workers; and
• the assessment is reviewed when necessary.
Systems
A ‘suitable’ risk assessment is one that:
• Correctly identifies the significant hazards associated with the work;
• Allows the organization to correctly identify the control measure that they
need to introduce; and is appropriate to the nature of the work.
• Those involved in the risk assessment process must have an appropriate
level of knowledge and experience and, when evaluating risk, reference
must be made to the relevant standards.
Systems
▪ Essentially risk assessment is a simple process. Workplace risk assessments
tend to follow a formal procedure. risk assessment is a five-step process:
1 Identify the hazards 2 Estimate the risks
3 Evaluate the risks 4 Review the findings
5 Record the findings

➢ Identify the Hazards
▪ A hazard is something with the potential to cause harm and this will include
the physical, chemical and biological hazards that can cause direct injury or ill
health. For each hazard identified the groups of people. This might include:
• Workers carrying out the work.

• Contractors and temporary staff working in the workplace.
• Visitors to the workplace.
• Members of the public.
➢ Identify the Hazards
✓ For example:
• A cloud of dust generated in an engineering workshop presents a health risk
to any person in the workshop who inhales it; workers, contractors and visitors.
• A toxic gas escape from a cannery presents a risk to everyone on site and the
members of the public who live or work nearby or just happen to be walking
by at the time.
➢ Estimate the Risks
▪ For each hazard identified, the level of risk generated needs to be
estimated.
• Risk is a combination of the likelihood of a hazardous event in
combination with the consequence.
• One way of doing this is to allocate a numerical value (a score)
to each of these components. Then risk can be rated by
multiplying these scores together:
Risk = Likelihood × Consequence
Likelihood Consequence
1 = very unlikely 1 = insignificant - no injury
2 = unlikely 2 = minor - injury needing first aid
3 = possible 3 = moderate - lost time injury
4 = likely 4 = major - hospital treatment
5 = certain 5 = catastrophic - death or disabling

injury
• In this way, it is possible
to create a risk-rating
matrix.
• This matrix has been

color-coded using a
traffic light system; green
identifies a low risk, red
identifies a high risk, and
intermediate risks are
shown in between.
LIKELIHOOD
✓ For example, if estimating the risk presented by items of portable electrical
equipment in an office, you might want to know when a competent person
last gave the items a thorough examination and test. If the answer was
never, then you might suspect that the level of risk was high. But if you find
out that the items are all inspected and tested at the correct frequency and
that this was done recently by a suitably qualified competent person, then
you might estimate the level of risk as being low.

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INDUSTRIAL

• Therefore, managers at all levels of the organization have a legal duty to

• It is important to recognize that, as a manager, you are responsible for the

• All relevant legal records are made and kept.

• Where staff training needs are identified, that training is provided.

• Hazard: Something with the potential to cause harm. Everyday examples of

hazards would include:

• Risk assessment is the careful examination of anything in your workplace

• So risk is the combination of two factors - the likelihood of a hazardous

✓ What is the surface of the stairs made of?

✓ Will the cleaner put warning signs up?

• a “suitable” risk assessment is carried out

• Correctly identifies the significant hazards associated with the work;

1 Identify the hazards 2 Estimate the risks

3 Evaluate the risks 4 Review the findings

5 Record the findings

• Workers carrying out the work.

2 = unlikely 2 = minor - injury needing first aid

3 = possible 3 = moderate - lost time injury

4 = likely 4 = major - hospital treatment

5 = certain 5 = catastrophic - death or disabling

• This matrix has been

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