A Hazard Vulnerability Analysis in 7 Steps

The safety of employees, contractors, and third parties is paramount for every workplace undergoing construction and repair. And maximizing that safety requires a hazard vulnerability analysis to identify and prevent potential risks.

However, not all organizations establish the necessary procedures to conduct these analyses and build a more robust safety culture. This shortcoming is often the result of inexperience and a safety team needing more expertise.

This article discusses seven steps those organizations should consider when developing a hazard vulnerability analysis for their worksites.

Conducting a Hazard Vulnerability Analysis: 7 Steps

1. Identify Potential Safety Hazards

First, safety personnel should examine the workplace and note any potential hazards. These concerns might include the following:

• The materials workers handle
• How workers use tools and operate machinery
• Overall condition of the infrastructure
• Work procedures safety

Open communication between safety assessors and management is critical to prevent accidents stemming from these considerations. 

Lastly, effectively identifying and removing these possible threats requires management to employ personnel with the necessary qualifications, knowledge, and observational abilities. 

2. Categorize Potential Safety Hazards

Next, safety teams should categorize these hazards and create a process for handling each hazard type. The categories might include the following:

• Ergonomic hazards. These activities cause wear and tear on the human body, most notably repetitive movements that put a specific area under constant stress. 

• Chemical hazards. Chemicals in or around the workplace may harm the workforce, and safety teams must adequately identify and train workers to handle them.

• Biological hazards. Illness transmission can endanger employee health and safety, most recently exemplified during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Physical hazards. These risks include anything that might endanger workers, customers, or other third parties’ health or safety. Common examples include excessive noise, slipping on wet surfaces, and tripping over uneven ground or objects.

3. Determine Who is at the Most Risk for Each Hazard

In designing a risk mitigation strategy, management must know which workers and third parties are most susceptible to specific hazards. These insights can help safety teams develop narrowly defined plans most appropriate for a given risk.

For example, management should pay particular attention to jobs that demand specific qualifications and could be of higher risk for some workers, such as:

• New or expecting mothers
• Younger workers
• Migrant workers
• Workers with specific impairments

Additional considerations should include workers on the premises less often and during non-work hours. Those individuals who frequent the workplace less often and at odd times often go unaccounted for during a hazard analysis.

This workforce might include:

• Contractors
• Maintenance staff
• Cleaning crews
• Special visitors

While considering all workers and third parties is challenging, safety personnel must account for all scenarios that include any degree of risk.

4. Revisit Prior Accidents and Near Misses

Examining prior accidents can help safety personnel identify more subtle safety concerns inherent in relatively mundane activities. These might include (and as references above) the following:

• Cleaning
• Maintenance
• Repair
• Production cycle adjustments

Safety teams often spend the least time reviewing these daily tasks. However, every job at the workplace carries some degree of risk.

Lastly, safety teams should review near misses. While the workplace avoided an accident, any near miss is still an opportunity to revisit procedures and conduct additional training.

5. Develop Precautions

After identifying all potential hazards, safety teams must decide how to respond to each type, considering all laws and regulations. They might begin this process by comparing proposed responses to the organization’s best practices.

More specifically, management should review what controls are currently in place and compare them to the newly-developed recommended practices. This analysis helps the organization find areas for improvement. 

First, assessors should determine whether they can eliminate the risk and, if not, create the appropriate management steps. Potential solutions might include the following:

• Limiting access to dangerous areas to necessary personnel
• Supplying more PPE
• Exploring less hazardous approaches, such as switching to safer machinery or a less dangerous substance)
• Building barriers between worksites and bystanders

6. Record the Findings

One of the last (and most critical) steps is documenting and discussing the hazard analysis findings internally.

Assessment teams should be as clear and concise as possible when recording outcomes. For example, a recorded outcome might read as follows:

“Risk of tripping over debris near the digging site. Provide additional trash bins, train workers on debris cleanup, remove debris weekly, conduct weekly inspections.”

Finally, the hazard analysis must be appropriate and sufficient, including the steps discussed earlier, to improve an existing safety plan or create a new one.

7. Review the Hazard Vulnerability Analysis and Update it as Needed

Workplaces change over time, creating new risk scenarios that might render the existing hazard analysis obsolete. As such, safety personnel should reevaluate their assessments periodically and document recent developments.

Minimizing Risk Requires the Best Safety Technology

A hazard vulnerability analysis is vital to identifying and documenting potential risks in and around worksites. Minimizing those risks requires a qualified team of experts who can recognize possible scenarios and recommend suitable safety precautions based on the potential threat.

However, further minimizing incidents – and your liability in the event of injury – means hiring properly insured contractors well-versed in safety practices and who are adequately trained. Ensuring that your contractors meet these criteria also means leveraging a digital solution that tracks compliance with all necessary rules and regulations.