Risk Assessment Workflow

Introduction

A risk assessment is not a document that is written once. It is requested, carried out on board, released, stays valid for a while, expires, and is then requested again — a circle rather than a line. This document follows it once round.

Two properties of that circle explain most of the questions that come up:

The office asks, the vessel answers, the office releases. Which of the three steps applies depends on the risk level involved and on the configuration.
A valid assessment has a shelf life. Assessments expire and are reissued automatically. What looks like a disappeared assessment is usually one that has run its course and been replaced.

The office requests an assessment

The usual start is a request from the office, from a template: select it and use Request (from Template), choose the vessel, the due date and — where several exist — the risk matrix. The assessment then sits on board with the status open on board.

Several templates can be requested at once, and for several vessels in one go. Sister vessels can take over an assessment that already exists elsewhere in the fleet.

Where a company works without templates, an assessment can be created directly for an existing operation, and the vessel fills everything in. Both paths are described under Circulation and Create a Risk Assessment.

The vessel carries it out

Edit opens the assessment. Depending on the configuration it has up to five tabs — risk conditions, hazards, further actions, authorization and attachments.

The hazards tab is where the actual assessment happens. Hazards are added from the list or newly entered, and each is rated with likelihood and severity, for the hazard itself and again after the existing and the additional measures. The risk level follows from that combination and does not have to be set by hand. Rating can be done directly in the list without opening each hazard — see Create a Risk Assessment.

Where the installation uses them, the people who took part can be recorded with their signature — see Participants and Signatures. If that is set as mandatory, the assessment cannot be approved later without at least one signature, which is a reason to do it here and not at the end.

Assess closes the work on board. After that the assessment can no longer be changed there, and the date can no longer be moved.

Release, depending on the risk

What happens next is decided by the risk level — and this is the part worth understanding, because it is where the two possible paths separate:

Where the risk level allows closing on board, the vessel finishes the assessment itself.
Where it does not, the assessment moves into Approval in Office required and waits for the office.

In the second case the office is notified by mail, so nobody has to watch the folder — including a catch-up function for assessments whose notification never went out. Which risk levels need approval, who is notified, and how the notification is checked is described under Office Approval.

The office reviews and approves. Depending on the configuration, approving and closing are one step or two, and a remark may be required.

While it is valid

An approved assessment is currently valid and can be referenced from other modules — a maintenance job, an incident, a ship defect report, a task. That reference is made through Attach a Risk Assessment, which also explains the most common reason an assessment you expect is not offered there.

How long it stays valid depends on what it is:

A routine operation assessment stays valid, unless it was requested with a period.
A non-routine assessment is valid for 24 hours after its approval — deliberately, because it covers one particular job.

Expiry and reissue

Assessments that have run their course are closed automatically overnight. For a requested assessment a new one is created for the same vessel at the same time, and has to be assessed on board again.

That is the point where the circle closes: what looks like a new task on board is the successor of the one that just expired.

The side path: the vessel needs something that does not exist

When the crew has to assess an operation that is not in the catalog, they create an extraordinary assessment and can enter the operation and the hazards themselves. Those entries are marked as unapproved and are not part of the catalog yet.

The office decides afterwards: approve, merge into an existing entry, or reject. This keeps a fleet-wide catalog from filling up with three spellings of the same operation. The dashboard can point out that something is waiting — see Approving Hazards and Operations.

Where to look when something is not where you expect

The assessment is not on board — it was requested, but the data transfer has not run yet.
It cannot be selected in another module — see the three causes under Attach a Risk Assessment; the most common is an operation that has been set inactive.
It has disappeared from the open folder — it was probably approved and is now valid, or it expired overnight and its successor is waiting.