Hazards and risk assessment
The hazard identification process
All staff are encouraged to report safety events or potential hazards however insignificant they may consider them at the time. Responsibility for making our operations safer for every one lies with each one of us, therefore safety is everyone’s responsibility. Click here to proceed to the Hazard Report Form.
The Safety Manager is responsible for investigating to determine the root cause, and if necessary forward recommendations for corrective action to the responsible manager
The hazard identification process is the formal means of collecting, recording, analysing, acting on and generating feedback about hazards and the associated risks that affect the safety of the Grafair’s operational activities. The hazards identification process features several components:
The reactive approach consists of analysing accidents and incidents that have occurred and trying to understand why. Based on the analysis of reported accidents and incidents, the following questions should be asked:
- What accidents or incidents did happen and why?
- For what reasons or did these occur? Because of what causal factors?
- What barriers or risk controls failed and which barriers worked?
The proactive approach consists of analysing the conduct of operations to identify potential hazards and assess the associated risks and then to mitigate risks factors before they result in an accident or incident. This approach should trigger the following questions:
- What accidents or incidents could happen and why?
- For what reasons could these occur?
- Do we feel enough protected? Any action we should take now to prevent these from occurring?
The predictive approach consists of conducting a predictive analysis using for instance data extrapolation (estimating for instance the future risk level based on the data collected over the past 3 or 5 years) or statistical modelling (a more complex way). A predictive approach aims to identify and mitigate risks before they become evident (addressing today the risks of tomorrow). This approach poses the following question:
- What accidents or incidents could happen in the future and why?
- Do we feel enough protected? Any action we should take now to avoid such future risks and occurrences (addressing today the risks of tomorrow)?
The predictive and proactive approaches are very effective tools for the management of safety, they should build upon the basis of solid reactive processes.
Risk assessment and control
Risk combines two main dimensions: likelihood of hazard consequences and their severity. Both dimensions have to be assessed. However, the urgency for course of actions for a particular event should be assessed prior to any detailed risk assessment process. Moreover, likelihood should encompass the dimension of exposure of people, activities, equipment or number of events to a particular hazard. Exposure may be defined as the amount of time, number of events, number of people involved, how much equipment involved, the amount of activity during which mishap exposure exists, etc. It identifies generally how many people will be exposed to what hazards and for how long.
Grafair is implementing the Aviation Risk Management Solutions methodology (further described in the Operation Manuals part A) where the risk is calculated as a combination of the Probability (likelihood) of occurrence, the associated Severity and the Exposure (R = P x S x E). The result of the calculation results in an index that is assessed as below.
