How to risk assess the use of a stairwell!

Risk Assessment is the spine of health and safety management - it connects the limbs to the brain and is the distributor of instruction - this is how we do this safely, this is how we lower risk of harm. A neat little blueprint on how to avoid harm from the hazards we interact with.

Risk assessments is actually part of our everyday lives from the minute we open our eyes on a morning to the minute we rest our busy little heads we are risk assessing. For example, can I have 5 more minutes of sleep - will I be late? Shall I cross the road here - will I get knocked down? Where shall we go for food later - what do I want to eat, and will it be any good there? There isn't always harm involved (well actually emotional damage is harm so I take that back) but the recipe is always the same what am I doing, what might happen how can I lower or limit how bad that will be.

Throughout my career, whatever industry, whatever company one thing has been an absolute constant and that is the explanation, and absolute teeth pull that is getting people to do their risk assessments - something so simple, so vital and the absolute groundwork of safe working practice so why. The title of this post has much to do with my tiny vile of stone blood - early on in my career an unfortunate but ridiculous incident occurred in a stairwell that involved the loss of several teeth this progressed into a claim of negligence resulting in a visit from the other professional who also receives a loud boo from the crowd - the loss adjuster (sorry loss adjusters but we both know what that feels like so let's just be buddies and move on). Said loss adjuster proceeds following the required investigations to request from me a risk assessment for using said stairwell. Yep, you read that correctly. The point of this story is that it is partly it is the beast of insurance and negligence claims and the threat of punitive actions that leads to the fear add in the vast abundance of lazy and entirely predictable click through e-learning, sweeten with a dash of templates and examples and here lays the inevitable avoidance of risk assessment.

It's not your fault you find yourself staring at the blank form, it's not your fault that the a lot of risk assessment forms still use the pointlessly subjective red amber green system that went out of date years ago, it is however the work of 20 years for my tiny vile of stone blood and will continue to squeeze that piece of rock until I am at least a thimble full because in health and safety the consequences of failure are very clear and sometimes immediately real so a glimmer of hope is worth a hundred migraines. Also - templates are the devil's work.

P.S for the safety nerds - yes, the stairwell met all the required codes and standards and yes there were risk assessments that covered its safe maintenance and cleaning.