Risk Assessment Builder
Create a bespoke Production Risk Assessment online
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ONLINE RISK ASSESSMENTS
Over 100 production activities and thousands of suggested controls
Expertly authored by safety professionals with decades of production experience. Log in to view.
- Select activities and choose risks and controls
- Add your own custom content
- All your RAs stored in your Library
- Links to Safety Knowledgebase for each activity
- Copy and edit your existing RAs to save time
- AUtomatically send to Advice Line for expert review
Risk Assessment Basics
First, fill in the details about the production and then simply select the activities that are relevant.
You will be presented with potential hazards and controls. If something isn’t covered, add it in the ‘Additional Controls’ box – but the database content should give you a good start. If you need help with assessing hundreds of other production activities you can find resources here.
There are tooltips and notes to help you throughout this page, but here’s your Risk Assessment basics:
| What is a Risk Assessment? | A Risk Assessment is a way to identify potential dangers during production and decide how to prevent harm to cast, crew, and the public. Think of it as a process rather than a document. It’s just a logical framework to identify what could go wrong – and what everyone can do to stop that happening. |
| Activity | What you’re doing (e.g. filming with drones). |
| Hazard and Risk | What could go wrong (e.g. drone crash) and what might happen (e.g. injury from falling drone or debris). |
| Who is affected | Who could get hurt? (e.g. camera crew, cast, public). |
| Controls / Mitigations | How you’ll reduce the risk (e.g. trained operator, no-fly zones). |
| Person Responsible | Who makes sure the controls happen? |
| Residual Risk | If you implement all the controls, how much risk remains? This isn’t about marking everything as ‘low risk’, for some activities might still be Medium or even High Risk. The Residual risk identifies things you really need to keep your eye on. |
It's A Process!
| Hazard and Risks | Checkboxes give common risks associated with each activity you have selected, and potential negative outcomes. For example a drone crash resulting in injury from falling drone or debris. Take care to select relevant risks for what you’re doing: if it’s not relevant, leave it out. Assessments need to be comprehensive but relevant. |
| Who Is Affected? | Who could be affected by the risks you have identified? Cast? Crew? Public? Everyone? |
| Controls | This is where you check off relevant controls you can implement to mitigate those risks. |
| Responsibility | An individual needs to be in overall charge of making sure the controls are implemented, otherwise you risk “I thought someone else was taking care of that” when something preventable has gone wrong. The severity of the risk / potential outcome should correlate with the seniority of the person responsible for overseeing it. |
| Residual Risk | If you implement all the controls, how much risk remains? This isn’t about marking everything as ‘low risk’, for some activities might still be Medium or even High Risk. The Residual risk helps identify the things you really need to keep your eye on. |
| Other Controls | The pre-populated suggestions aim to be comprehensive, but by their very nature will be general. In this box you can add any other controls you’re implementing and other useful information. You don’t need to write a novel: clarity and precision are key. If no one reads the assessment because there’s too much irrelevant detail or the important parts are buried, you’ve failed. |
| More Info | There are links to the original Safety Bulletins relevant to each activity at the bottom. These open in a new tab / window so you don’t lose your place. |
Save and Continue
Save and Continue
The Save and Continue function allows you to save your place and come back to your draft Risk Assessment without needing to start all over again. When you click the button, you will be given a custom link to the current progress of your Risk Assessment with the option of sending the link via email. You can use this to email a draft to a colleague – for a signature, for example.
Links created will last 60 days. After that time, the link will no longer be accessible.
Draft Management
You can view, resume, and delete your own ‘Save & Continue’ drafts. They are listed at the top of the page. To resume a draft, click on the draft link, and when the page loads the form will be repopulated with data from the selected draft.
Delete a Draft
Click the trash icon next to a draft link to delete that draft. Note that this action cannot be undone. The user will be prompted to confirm before the draft is deleted.
Start a New Draft
When using the Drafts List, start a new draft by clicking the Start New Draft button.
About the Database
The safety database that powers this builder is huge. Every one of its 65,000 words has been written by qualified safety professionals with decades of production experience, not AI. To give you an idea of scale:
- Over 100 common production activities
- Over 500 potential associated risks
- ~2,000 suggested controls
- This all adds up to about half a million characters of text!
Naturally, loading the entire database would take ages. So we only load the parts you actually want, in order to save waiting time. But there is a short wait while data is fetched from the database. Here’s how it works.
Selecting Production Activities
When you first click on the Production Activities field, it will load the names of all the most frequently-requested Risk Assessment templates on the system. You can download the more obscure ones here. This only loads once – when you first interact with the field. It only takes a few seconds. You can then scroll down the list or type a keyword in the search box.
Important: when you select an activity, it takes a few seconds – depending on your browser settings and connections – to interrogate the database and pull the data into your Risk Assessment. You’ll then see a box beneath the Production Activities search with the name of the activity you’ve selected. We urge you to let it complete that part before selecting the next activity. It’s only a couple of seconds.
Individual Activities
Once you’ve selected your activities you’ll see a box beneath each one. Click on the box and it will pull the most common risks associated with the activity from the database.
Read each one and click on those that are relevant. When you do, the other elements will appear: who is affected, suggested controls, and who is responsible for ensuring the controls are implemented. There is also a field where you can list additional risks and controls – add as many or few as you need.
This is followed by the residual risk if the controls are all followed. Remember that the idea isn’t to put ‘Low’ against every activity – some activities will always carry a higher risk than others. One of the purposes of a Risk Assessment is to identify the ones you really need to keep an eye on.
There is a ‘Notes’ field where you can add any further information you need to, and a link to Knowledgebase resources for the activity.
Editing and Copying Assessments
You have a number of options for re-using data you’ve already filled in both before and after you’ve published a Risk Assessment. Each gives you a slightly different set of choices.
| Re-Use Data | This option is available before you publish a Risk Assessment. What is does is create a token containing all the production details: company details, location, people etc. It won’t copy over risks and controls, though; it’s intended to help you draft a new RA quickly and easily. It copies these details into a new draft (unpublished) RA – this means you can use features like Save and Continue, email a link to collaborators etc. The token is valid for 30 days and can be found under ‘Fresh Draft’ in your Risk Assessment Library. If you don’t check the ‘Re-Use Data’ option OR the token is not used withn 60 days, it will not be avaiable. |
| Duplicate RA | This can be found in your Risk Assessment Library. It takes an existing RA and publishes it as a new one, including all risks and controls. Because this method publishes the RA, features like Save and Continue are not avaiable (these only apply to unpublised drafts), but you can still edit it. |
| Edit RA | All Risk Assessments published to your Risk Assessment Library can be edited by you. Others can’t see or edit content in your Library for version control and Data Protection. |
