NEBOSH General Certificate - Risk Assessment Practical Exam – Part 3

In the earlier posts you have learned about the new NEBOSH General Certificate and how the Stage 1 of the risk assessment can be approached. In this post we will discuss about the Stage 2 of the practical which deals with the main part – procedures followed to do risk assessment.

Stage 2: Risk Assessment

Conducting successful risk assessment is the core of the four stages of the practical assessment exercise. Candidates must recognise and document a minimum of 10 hazards of various types falling under 5 categories. They can choose these five hazard categories from the topics of Elements 5-11 which form part of NG1/IG1 syllabus. These five categories are included in the below table:

How to compete risk assessment

With the help of recognised hazards in the organisation, you should complete the risk assessment in a tabulation form. The table should be divided into few columns with each providing accounts for various information such as nature of risks, effects, procedures followed to reduce or mitigate, your feedbacks/suggestions, time limit and role of respective managers.

A worked example of risk assessment in tabulation form

Students can select any one of the chosen hazard categories and name the hazard and provide risk assessment report in a tabulation form by adding information in suitable columns which are explained below:,

• In the column 1, include the name of the hazard and respective category
• Column 2 should include workers, who are likely to be affected by the risks, reasons and nature of activities and equipment used
• Your take on controlling hazard should be included in column 3
• How further risk control measures are required should be mentioned in column 4. Present it in systematic and hierarchical manner along with principles of preventive methods
• Column 5 should contain the time frame needed to implement risk control measures
• Provide the information such as role of person’s responsible for completing each action and their designation in column 6

When you complete the risk assessment tabulation, you will come across a scenario that in column 3 where you will provide what you are doing to mitigate risks and column 4 what further control measures needed to reduce risks become more or less matching with each other. For example, if you are doing enough control measures to contain risks, then you will add a very few details in column 4. Similarly, when you add very few things in column 3, you will add more information in column4. For assessment of your report, both the scenarios are acceptable by the examiner and considered to be realistic.