Welcome, Commercial Drone Pilots!
Join our growing community today!
Sign up

UK - Risk Assessments - Do you write the same things over and over again?

Geoff G UK

Active Member
Joined
Jan 10, 2018
Messages
42
Reaction score
19
Location
North wales, UK
Website
ibexfilms.co.uk
I tend to be doing the same kind of work in the same areas quite a lot. Consequently many of my RAs look strikingly similar!
By this I mean that I encounter the same kinds of risks all the time - minor roads, public footpaths, loose sheep etc., etc..

I'm wondering about developing a better system to unify my assessments so that I spend more time detailing just the variations on commonly occurring factors rather than endlessly repeating the same things. That would mean more time to spend asssessing factors unique to the site.

Has anyone beaten me too it? If so, I'd be delighted to hear about other systems.
 
I use my aircraft in a similar way. I developed checklists and risk assessments. These I loaded onto Kittyhawk.io and now it is quite quite to go through the lists and tick the boxes, making notes of changes whenever appropriate. I love the Kittyhawk system as it is just right for me. There re other similar systems about but the access to the data , for example where I renew my PfCO , makes it really useful. However, there is also the danger of becoming complacent if you use the same area a lot. You may visit many times, as I do my main site, but it is always worth treating it as a new experience each time.
 
I tend to be doing the same kind of work in the same areas quite a lot. Consequently many of my RAs look strikingly similar!
By this I mean that I encounter the same kinds of risks all the time - minor roads, public footpaths, loose sheep etc., etc..

I'm wondering about developing a better system to unify my assessments so that I spend more time detailing just the variations on commonly occurring factors rather than endlessly repeating the same things. That would mean more time to spend asssessing factors unique to the site.

Has anyone beaten me too it? If so, I'd be delighted to hear about other systems.

Like you say, a lot of the hazards will be the same no matter where you fly. For this reason we have a risk assessment word document template, with the common hazards already typed up, which we'll then risk asses before we fly. We then have a couple of blank rows at the bottom of the sheet to add any additional hazards applicable to that flight (if any).
 
Thanks for the reponses - I suppose we're all going the same way by trying to take the repetiitive writing work out of the job one way or another. But ii's the implication of accuracy which I find rather tedious about filling in RAs.

The idea of making subjective judgments about risk severities and probabilities and then trying to quantify the result by multipication suggests precision which clearly does not exist.

I would argue that the important thing that should be going on with RAs is the process of considering the various possibilities and then applying experience and common sense to the situation, rather than arriving at arbitrary figures so that they can be mitigated to lower numbers.

Perhaps a handbook of mitigation ranges for various types of risk is the answer!

I wonder if anyone has had feedback from the CAA during inspections about all this?
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
4,277
Messages
37,605
Members
5,969
Latest member
KC5JIM