---
title: "Risk assessment"
url: "https://docs.4hse.com/risk-assessment"
description: "How 4HSE describes work, identifies the hazards it exposes people to, and measures the risk that remains after the measures you take."
---

# Risk assessment

Risk assessment connects what people do to what protects them. 4HSE builds it in four steps, each of which presupposes the previous one: skipping a step makes the later ones unusable.

1.  **Describe the work.** A work phase records in detail what workers actually do.
2.  **Find the hazards.** They come from the physical resources the work uses — environments, equipment, substances.
3.  **Identify the risks.** A hazard that is present in a phase becomes a risk for the people in that phase.
4.  **Reduce them.** The prevention actions linked to the phase are the measures, and their effect is measured on the risk itself.

## The aggregator: what you assess around

[Section titled “The aggregator: what you assess around”](#the-aggregator-what-you-assess-around)

Before starting, a project chooses **what the assessment is organised around**. It can be the work phase, the job position, or the homogeneous group — see [Risk aggregators](/risk-assessment/risk-aggregators). The choice reflects how the organisation actually works, and it decides where the risk management sections appear.

The rest of this area uses the **work phase**, which is the most common choice.

## Exposure, not just presence

[Section titled “Exposure, not just presence”](#exposure-not-just-presence)

The same hazard does not carry the same risk for everybody. What changes is how long, how often and under what conditions a person is exposed — which is why people are linked to the phase, not to the hazard. A phase that lasts ten minutes a month and one that lasts six hours a day produce different assessments from the same starting point.

## Initial risk and residual risk

[Section titled “Initial risk and residual risk”](#initial-risk-and-residual-risk)

The assessment is not a single number. 4HSE keeps two:

-   the **initial risk**, before the measures;
-   the **residual risk**, after them.

Keeping both is what makes the measures accountable: it shows what has been gained, and what remains. See [Initial and residual risk](/risk-assessment/initial-and-residual-risk).

![The path to the risk assessment matrix](/_astro/work-phases-1.746EeN3h_Z29nUj0.webp)

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google [Privacy Policy](https://policies.google.com/privacy) and [Terms of Service](https://policies.google.com/terms) apply.