Series: Risk Assessment

This series dis­cusses risk assess­ment as it is prac­ticed in machinery safety. Oth­er forms of risk assess­ment vary and may apply to sim­il­ar situ­ations. The approaches dis­cussed here are those dis­cussed in the Inter­na­tion­al, Cana­dian, European and US stand­ards for safety of mach­nery.

ISO Withdraws Machinery Risk Assessment Standards

This entry is part 1 of 8 in the series Risk Assess­ment

ISO has with­drawn three long-stand­ing basic machinery safety stand­ards used inter­na­tion­ally and in the EU and replaced them with a single com­bined doc­u­ment. If you design, build or integ­rate machinery for sale inter­na­tion­ally or with­in the EU, this new stand­ard needs to be on your BUY list!

ISO has with­drawn three long-stand­ing basic machinery safety stand­ards used inter­na­tion­ally and in the EU and replaced them with a single com­bined doc­u­ment. If you design, build or integ­rate machinery for sale inter­na­tion­ally or with­in the EU, this new stand­ard needs to be on your BUY list! Con­tin­ue read­ing “ISO With­draws Machinery Risk Assess­ment Stand­ards”

How Risk Assessment Fails

Fukushima Dai Ichi Power Plant after the explosionsThe events unfold­ing at Japan’s Fukushi­ma Dai Ichi Nuc­le­ar Power plant are a case study in ways that the risk assess­ment pro­cess can fail or be abused. In an art­icle pub­lished on Bloomberg.com, Jason Clen­field item­izes dec­ades of fraud and fail­ures in engin­eer­ing and admin­is­tra­tion that have led to the cata­stroph­ic fail­ure of four of six react­ors at the 40-year-old Fukushi­ma plant. Clenfield’s art­icle, ‘Dis­aster Caps Faked Reports’, goes on to cov­er sim­il­ar fail­ures in the Japan­ese nuc­le­ar sec­tor. Con­tin­ue read­ing “How Risk Assess­ment Fails”

The purpose of risk assessment

I’m often asked what seems like a pretty simple ques­tion: “Why do we need to do a risk assess­ment?” There are a lot of good reas­ons to do risk assess­ments, but ulti­mately, the pur­pose of risk assess­ment is best summed up in this quo­ta­tion:

“Risk assess­ments, except in the simplest of cir­cum­stances, are not designed for mak­ing judge­ments, but to illu­min­ate them.”

Richard Wilson and E. A. C. Crouch, Sci­ence, Volume 236, 1987, pp.267