Production Risk Assessment FAQ
Getting the best out of the interactive online Production Risk Assessment
Using the Production Risk Assessment
Our interactive online Risk Assessment generator is intuitive to use and gives you many prompts as you fill it in. There are also tips for many individual fields.
The Premium version has some very sophisticated additional features – including version management, multilingual support and offline editing.
Take a look at all the features and how they work below. To unlock Premium features, take a look at our Retainer Client packages. Weekly, monthly, quarterly, six-monthly and annual subscriptions are available – easily move access to Premium features around your team and add users when you need to.
Overview
🎖 = Premium feature. To unlock Premium features, take a look at our Retainer Client packages. Weekly, monthly, quarterly, six-monthly and annual subscriptions are available – easily move access to Premium features around your team and add users when you need to.
More Details
A Risk Assessment is intended to list the significant hazards that may arise during prep, filming, and de-rig activities at various locations during the course of this production and the control measures that will be in place to reduce the risks to an acceptable level.
It’s not a piece of paper (even though that’s one of its outputs), it’s a process. It helps you to:
- Identify significant hazards
- Identify who is at risk
- Evaluate what controls required
- Record findings on risk assessment and implement controls
- Assign the person responsible for ensuring controls are implemented
- Review and update as required
This Risk Assessment will help demonstrate the production company is showing due diligence in line with sections 2, 3 and 7 of The Health and Safe at Work Act 1974, provided the risk assessment is adhered to.
Hazards Identified and Risks Arising
You need to identify and list what hazards could cause significant harm, how, and to whom. This includes anybody who may be present and affected by your activity. You should include details of anyone other than cast and crew that may be affected, e.g. other workers, public, drivers, children, elderly, disabled, and those who may be more vulnerable to certain hazards in the Additional Information box for each item.
Risk Assessment and Precautions Required
Evaluate the risks and decide if existing precautions/controls are sufficient, or whether more needs to be done. Take into account information from all available sources (e.g. contractors, premises management, resource providers etc). There is a box below each item to add further information if you need to. You need to check all appropriate boxes in this section and add any further controls in the Additional Info box.
Responsibility
Who is responsible for the implementation and management of the controls? The responsible person must be added in the fourth column.
Residual Risk
Inherent risk represents the amount of risk that exists in the absence of the controls listed. Residual risk is the amount of risk that remains after controls are accounted for. For each activity you need to assess the level of risk that remains after the controls you have listed have been implemented.
There are multiple production activities already listed, but if there is something off-piste that’s specific to your production that you need to include, we’ve got you covered.
You add custom content so that it sits in the main Risk Assessment with everything else. Simply give it a title and add in your own risks and relevant controls.
When you’ve completed your Risk Assessment, you have the option to send it to our team of safety professionals for review and comment.
When you start a new Risk Assessment you will be asked:
Would you like to automatically save progress?
We urge you to select ‘please autosave my progress‘ as this will add a cookie that enables a lot of extra functionality, including draft management and version control.
At the top of the page you will see a list of any Draft RAs you’re working on. By default, the last one you had open will load. To switch to another draft, just click on its name in the list at the top of the page.
You can switch to any of the others listed or Start New Draft for a fresh one. Drafts are saved as Name of Production (This RA Applies To).
It isn’t possible to change the standard text in the Risks and Controls sections.
However, if something either isn’t covered or the text just isn’t quite right, there’s an ‘Additional Controls’ section for each activity where you can use your own wording.
At the top of the page you will see a list of any Draft RAs you’re working on. By default, the last one you had open will load.
You can switch to any of the others listed or Start New Draft for a fresh one. Drafts are saved as Name of Production (This RA Applies To).
See also Version Control below.
As you navigate through your Risk Assessment there are links to access relevant content in the First Option Safety KnowledgeBase – hundreds of carefully curated articles about specific production activities written by safety professionals with wide experience in Film, TV, and Events.
There are a series of flags at the top left of every page offering multi-language options. This is intended to give better access for users whose first language is not English.
There are also other accessibility options: see here for details.
Note that the final Risk Assessment will still be produced in English because we can’t support machine translation of safety documents, but should you choose to use a translation service such as Google Translate for the completed document you are free to do so.
Should you wish to use Google Translate (which is entirely at your own risk) the process for translating a whole document is very simple:
- Save the completed Risk Assessment PDF
- In your browser, go to Google Translate
- At the top, click Documents
- Choose the languages to translate to and from
- Click Browse your computer
- Select the file that you want to translate
- Click View translation or Download translation.
Once you’ve loaded the Production Risk Assessment page, if you lose your data signal (on a recce, for example) your data will be saved in your browser, even if you close it down.
As soon as you have an active connection, go back to the page and you can restore your Risk Assessment including all the data you entered while offline.
Note that you need to load the page while you have an active data connection – it’s when you lose signal that this feature comes into its own.
The Premium version of the Production Risk Assessment has some very sophisticated document management and version control features.
Whoever initiates the RA becomes the owner of that document. Amongst other things, the owner can send a link to collaborators for signatures or other contributions. This is not the same as emailing a copy of the Risk Assessment itself – which can rapidly become a nightmare keeping track of which version is which.
- Only one copy ever exists. Until it’s published, assignees can edit that master copy in real time and it updates automatically (on page refresh or save*).
- No uncontrolled copies. Because assignees are all editing the master copy online and can’t make any further changes once it’s published, version control becomes much simpler.
- Automatic version numbering: once the Risk Assessment is published, each time the owner makes a change the version number auto-increments.
- Use case: owner could have an assistant complete basic details while keeping overall control of the document.
- Use case: get experts or HODs to complete sections.
Once the owner is happy the RA is complete, only the owner can finalise and publish it. Once it’s published there is only one copy and only the owner can make changes to it.
And if the document is changed, an updated copy is automatically emailed to the Distribution list with details of what has changed.
*We recommend the owner asks for inputs sequentially where possible: if two people are editing at the same time, they can overwrite each others changes. Also, users should refresh the page before making changes – this will ensure they are seeing the most up to date version. If they keep an older version open in their browser and make changes to that, they might overwrite content that has been updated by others more recently.
| Owner | Assignee | |
|---|---|---|
| Who Is… | The user who starts the draft Risk Assessment. | Anyone the owner shares a link to the draft Risk Assessment with. |
| What can they do? | The owner has complete control over the Risk Assessment and only the owner can finalise and publish the completed Risk Assessment. | Is able to make edits to the Risk Assessment while it is still in draft form. |
| Editing drafts | Owner can always edit but can also send link to assignee to allow editing. | Assignee can see the draft Risk Assessment in their Drafts on the Risk Assessment page and can make changes to it.
When they save their edits, the owner automatically receives an email letting them know. |
| What happens when the Risk Assessment is finalised and published by the owner? | From that point on, only the owner can make edits – this is important for version control.
If the owner makes an edit, the updated Risk Assessment is sent to the Distribution List. The email also details what has changed. |
The assignee can no longer edit the Risk Assessment. |
| What if the owner subsequently makes any changes? | An email is sent to the owner and all users on the Distribution List informing them what has been changed with a copy of the revised Risk Assessment attached.
All Risk Assessments have a version number which increments every time the document is revised. |
|
No. By default, the logged-in user that starts the Risk Assessment automatically becomes the owner. There is no option for users to change this.
However, we do understand that sometimes for operational reasons – if someone leaves, for example – a production may need to make a change. This may possible under certain circumstances. Please contact us to discuss if you need this.
