Working at Height Risk Assessment

Today, I would like to share an excellent tool that will be useful for absolutely all manufacturing enterprises where employees perform work at height.

As we all know, working at height is classified as high-hazard work and carries significant risks for personnel. According to the All-Russian Research Institute of Labor of the Ministry of Labor of Russia, from 2019 to 2023, falls from height took the leading position in the proportion of main types of accidents with severe consequences (p. 12 of the report on the "State of Occupational Injuries").

At our enterprise, as a preventive measure to organize safe work at height, extensive work was carried out to assess the risks of working at height performed by personnel.

The risk assessment process for working at height is practically no different from a standard risk assessment and consists of the following stages:

1. Creating a commission to conduct the risk assessment for working at height. We do not practice issuing this as an "official" paper order; instead, we typically involve department heads and the workers themselves in the risk assessment.
2. Conducting the risk assessment directly at the production site. We have developed a checklist titled "Risk Assessment Analysis for Working at Height" (attached to the article). During these activities, photographic documentation is mandatory as an appendix to the checklist, to be used later when issuing a permit-to-work.

The criteria in our risk assessment methodology are: Probability of occurrence, frequency of occurrence, and severity of hazard.

The risk level is determined by the formula: (Probability Score + Frequency Score) x Severity Score.

Several indicators are evaluated using the checklist, for example: existing control measures and systems, environmental conditions that may also affect the probability of risk occurrence, and operational hazards (e.g., a wall opening, working on a roof edge, presence of a slope, confined spaces, etc.).

3. Entering information about locations where work at height is performed, along with the risk assessment results, into a unified database (we use an Excel file with active links to the assessment sheets themselves and photographs - attached to the article).
4. Developing an action plan based on the risk assessment results. After conducting the risk assessment at our enterprise, we identified 403 work-at-height points across all areas, and 127 corrective actions aimed at reducing or eliminating risks during work at height were planned and implemented.

Why is it important to conduct this risk assessment specifically for working at height? First, it saves time on approving high-hazard work when dealing with "standard tasks." Having access to the database makes it easy to evaluate whether there are current risks and what needs to be done to mitigate them. Second, often when we conduct risk assessments by profession or generally across the enterprise (depending on the specific methodology at each particular site), it is possible that not all such tasks are accounted for. To eliminate "blind spots" in the risk assessment process, this procedure is highly effective.

Conducting such an assessment will, of course, require time and human resources, as analyzing and summarizing the information demands significant involvement. However, ultimately, this will have a positive impact on the safety level when organizing work at height. It is also important not to forget to conduct periodic reassessments, as conditions can change and affect the assessment results.