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© Baxi Heating UK 2012
6.0
Safety Information
6.1
Safety (cont)
Risk Assessments
8. The HSE has published a number of very useful free
publications that advise how to undertake risk assessments.
9. Two of these that you should obtain are:
Five Steps to Risk Assessment.
A Guide to Risk Assessment Requirements.
10.
The five steps outlined in the HSE leaflet are:
Step 1:
Look for the hazards, this will mean looking at the site
and identifying significant hazards. These could be features such
as a steep roof, a fragile surface where the collectors may be
mounted, uneven ground or obstructions where access to the
roof might be required.
Step 2:
Decide who may be harmed and how, this might
mean considering the particular risks that young workers or
trainees might face and thinking about the residents of the
household or visitors who could be hurt by your activities.
Step 3:
Evaluate the risks and decide which precautions
should be made, you should consider how likely it is that each
hazard will cause harm, decide which precautions you might
take and then assess, after you have taken those precautions,
whether the remaining risk will be high, medium or low. Where
you identify remaining risks, you should consider which further
action you could take to control the risks so that harm is
unlikely.
Step 4:
Record your findings, if you have fewer than five
employees you do not need to write anything down, though it
is useful to keep a written record of what you have done. If
you employ five or more people you must record the
significant findings of your assessment. You must also tell your
employees about your findings. You need to be able to show
that a proper check was made, that you considered who might
be affected, that you dealt with all the obvious significant
hazards, that the precautions you propose are reasonable and
that the remaining risk is low.
Step 5:
Review your assessment if necessary, each solar water
heating installation may bring its own challenges and present its
own particular hazards. You should therefore be careful not to
rely on a “standard” risk assessment for installing a solar water
heating system in a house, but review the particular hazards
for each new situation. The issue of work equipment must be
considered, but at the preparation stage you should consider
where scaffold or other access equipment might be positioned
and look out for any obvious obstacles to this, such as a
conservatory or porch. In addition to the risks associated with
work at height, you should also consider the risks associated
with lifting and carrying solar collectors, using electric drills and
using blow lamps or blow torches for soldering. This is not an
exclusive list and so you should consider all aspects of the
proposed installation to assess whether there are additional
risks that need to be taken into account.
