Page 90 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

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Understanding

the Risks

Risk is a word dependent upon the context of its use for full definition.
For example, the universe of risks that must be controlled to minimize
total injury frequency is quite different from the specific risks that must be
controlled to prevent serious, high-consequence incidents. Further, “seri-
ous incident” is a relative term with meaning dependent upon factors such
as size and type of organization. For a small employer, loss of a delivery
vehicle, destruction of a warehouse, or a disabling injury to a key em-
ployee may be sufficient to endanger continued profitable operations.
Occurrences having severe consequences for large facilities may be lim-
ited to incidents resulting in fatalities, multiple injuries, major property
damage, major business interruption, or significant impact on the public.
Understanding the risks is a prerequisite for identifying the critical
work necessary to control the risks. Understanding risks requires answer-
ing the questions: What can go wrong? How likely is each undesirable
event? What are the potential impacts? (See Figure 7-1). Understanding
risks requires in-depth knowledge of specific conditions and causal factors
that could lead to serious incidents.

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