Glossary
What is a Risk Assessment?
A risk assessment is a structured process for identifying what could cause harm in a given activity, estimating how likely it is and how severe it would be, then defining the controls that reduce it to an acceptable level. Its output is not a report filed away, but a list of controls each with a named owner and a date.
Glossary Published 3 min read
01Why it matters
Why it matters
The difference between a site that manages its risks and one that reacts to its incidents is this process. An assessment turns “is this work safe?” — a question with no measurable answer — into two specific ones: what could happen, and what have we put in place to stop it?
What most often spoils an assessment is that it is written once and then left. The site changes: a production line is rearranged, a new contractor arrives with their own equipment, a temporary walkway opens during maintenance. Each of those makes part of the written assessment stop describing reality, which is why an assessment is revisited at every material change, not only once a year.
02Examples
Examples of risks assessed
- Pedestrians entering an aisle where heavy handling equipment moves.
- Maintenance on equipment that could be energised by mistake while work is in progress.
- Material stacked above the safe height in a traffic area.
- Work in a poorly ventilated space for longer than planned.
- Two jobs overlapping in the same place at the same time — welding above, handling below.
03The process
How it is carried out — five steps
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Identify the hazard
What in this activity is capable of causing harm.
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Identify who is exposed
The worker doing the task, people around them, contractor crews, visitors.
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Estimate likelihood and severity
Each hazard is placed on a matrix combining how likely it is with how bad it would be, producing a level that sets priority.
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Choose the control in the correct order
Eliminate the hazard, then substitute it, then isolate it with engineering, then control it administratively, then personal protective equipment last.
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Document and review
Every control has an owner and a date, and is revisited whenever the site, the method or the crew changes.
The matrix itself is a prioritisation tool, not a verdict. A low-likelihood, high-severity hazard — equipment striking a person in an aisle, for instance — warrants an engineering control even if it has not happened in years, because the severity alone is enough.
04In a Saudi context
In a Saudi context
Most large industrial sites here run with subcontractors, and each contractor arrives with its own assessment of its own scope. The recurring result is a site holding several assessments that are each individually correct, with gaps between them: risks created by two jobs from two different parties overlapping appear in neither. That gap between assessments — rather than inside any one of them — is the source of a significant share of incidents on multi-contractor sites.
06The product connection
How this relates to SquintPRO
The weakest point in any risk assessment is that it is built on how the work is supposed to be performed. The event records and indicators the platform produces give the team a picture of what actually happens in the same area — how often, at what times, in which zones — so the review is grounded in site data rather than impression. Read about the platform.
RelatedRead about the platform
07FAQ
Questions people ask
Short answers to what people most often ask about this term.
What is a risk assessment?
A risk assessment is a structured look at what could cause harm in a task or place, how likely it is, how serious it would be, and what controls are needed to bring the risk to an acceptable level.
What are the steps of a risk assessment?
Identify the hazards, decide who could be harmed and how, rate the risk, decide the controls, record the findings, and review them when something changes or after an incident.
What is the difference between a hazard and a risk?
A hazard is something with the potential to cause harm, such as a live cable or a deep excavation. Risk is the chance that the hazard causes harm, combined with how serious the harm would be.
From the insights library
Continue in the glossary
Back to the glossary
Every term in this cluster, grouped by measurement, permits, hazards and equipment.
Glossary termPPE
Why it is the last layer of protection rather than the first, and when each item is required.
Glossary termNear miss
The preventive indicator most sites have the least data on, and why.
PracticeThe Interkey industrial safety practice
How camera-based monitoring turns a risk assessment’s controls into something observed continuously.
Next step
Turning a risk assessment into something the site can verify
Tell us which risks your assessment ranks highest, and we say which of them camera-based monitoring can actually observe, and which it cannot.
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