Series editors' preface - Wood Tools

isks so that harm is unlikely? Only use personal
protective equipment when there is nothing
else that you can reasonably do. When
sharing a workplace, tell the other people
using the space about risks your work could
cause them and what precautions you are taking.
Also think about the risks to yourself
and/or your workforce from those who share
your workplace. Useful guidelines on how to
assess the risks and containment regime for
chemical hazards are available from the Royal
Society of Chemistry booklet CoSHH in
Laboratories (2nd edn, 1996).
Step 4: Record your findings
In the United Kingdom, an organization with
five or more employees must record the significant
findings of the risk assessments. This
means writing down the more significant hazards
and recording the most important conclusions.
Irrespective of any legal obligation, these
are sensible and useful steps to take. There is
no need to show how the assessment was
done provided that you can show that a proper
check was made, that you asked who might be
affected, that you dealt with all the obvious significant
hazards taking into account the number
of people who could be involved, that the
precautions are reasonable and the remaining
risk is low.
Keep the written document for future use
and reference, it can help you if an inspector
questions your precautions or if you become
involved in any action for civil liability. It can
also remind you to keep an eye on particular
matters and it helps to show that you have
done what the law requires. It can be used by
staff to ensure that they know what the controls
are that should be used with particular
processes or materials.
How you record the list of hazards is up to
you but various standard forms are available
for this purpose from organizations such as
Croners. To make things simpler, you can refer
to other documents, such as manuals, company
rules, manufacturers’ instructions and
your own health and safety procedures. These
will probably already list much relevant information.
You don’t need to repeat all that and
it is up to you whether you combine all the
documents or keep them separately. Use team
briefing sessions and staff meetings to regularly
raise health and safety issues and assessments.
Conservation preliminaries 427
Step 5: Review your assessment
All conservators should ensure that they are
familiar with the contents of the risk assessments
for their workplace. Before undertaking
any process, you should check to see that the
risks to health and safety have already been
assessed and that the assessment still holds for
your purposes.
The risk assessment must be maintained.
Sooner or later, new machines, substances and
procedures will be introduced that could lead to
new hazards. If there is a significant change, to a
workplace, process or activity, or the introduction
of any new process, activity or operation, it must
be added to the assessment to take account of
the new hazard. In any case it is good practice
to review the assessment from time to time. Do
not amend the assessment for every trivial
change or each new job but if a new job introduces
significant new hazards of its own, you
should consider them in their own right and do
whatever you need to do to keep the risk down.
Reviewing and updating of the risk assessment
is best achieved by a combination of
safety inspections and monitoring techniques,
which require corrective and/or additional
action where the need is identified. The frequency
of review depends on the level of risk
in the operation and should not normally
exceed ten years. Further, a review is necessary
if an accident, or near miss, occurs in the organization
or elsewhere, or a check on the risk
assessment shows a gap in assessment procedures.
The process for monitoring, review and
corrective action is further discussed below.
9.7.5 Control risk
Once a hazard or risk has been identified and
assessed employers must either prevent the
risk arising or control it. Most hazards can be
considered as having a life cycle from acquisition
to disposal. In each case a range of control
methods (hierarchy of control) appropriate
for different kinds of risk is available. These
will not be effective unless they are actually
used, and in some cases, the level of competence
of operators may need to be assessed
before they do certain work. People must
know what the controls are and how they
should be applied before they can use them.
Therefore written procedures are very important.
Before any work activity, think first about