Aim

The aim of your risk assessment is a statement explaining its purpose. This statement should preferably consist of single sentence describing the predicted end result.

Be careful here! Make sure your aim refers to the risk assessment project, and not just to the document itself. Given that the project is being performed and the document is being written for an educational course, this ought to be in the aim as well.

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Objectives

Objectives are those things that must be achieved in order to satisfy your aim. You can see examples of training objectives at the beginning of each topic, in this case they are referred to as 'learning outcomes'. The objectives of your risk assessment report should be:

• achievable and realistic (within the constraints of your project);
• mandatory (if a specific objective is not achieved, then the aim has not been satisfied);
• measurable (you can provide evidence that the objective has been achieved).

In drawing up your objectives, you will need to consider the following, with continual reference to your aim:

• What will be the benefit of your risk assessment report?
• Consider criteria for:

- community security or investment;

- technological safeguards;

- market protection.

• Consider such constraints as:

- legal requirements;

- environmental issues;

- financial aspects;

- organisational policies and practises;

• other external or internal factors.

Following are some example hazard analysis objectives that could be used in an assignment:

• Establish the context of the risk assessment project including defining the project to be undertaken,
• Identify the risks through identification and description of the community, hazards and environment and scoping of the community's vulnerability.

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Scope

We have already touched briefly on the scope of a risk assessment in an earlier topic, when considering the application of risk assessment to either a community, area or activity.

Scope concerns to whom, what and where the risk assessment applies. It describes the boundaries of your hazard analysis.

The determination of an appropriate scope is crucial to the success of any research activity, including risk assessment. If the scope is too broad, then it is possible that the risk assessment will not be completed satisfactorily within the required time. If it is too loosely defined, then you may well stray into areas and onto topics that are not directly related to your subject and which will not contribute to the risk assessment.

You will be using your planning group to decide which hazards should be analysed in detail from the list of hazards they have identified. I would strongly recommend no more than five or six hazards to be described in detail otherwise you will run out of time.

Your scope should reflect the geographical limitations that you will place on your project, the time period that you have to complete the project within, any operational limitations/ boundaries to your project and any emergency management limitations/ boundaries (eg. number of hazards to be analysed) that you will set.

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Authority

I cannot give you a quick answer as to who or what gives you the authority for your risk assessment. It will depend on the topic, who you work for, and who you involve. The authority to conduct your risk assessment may come from one or more of the following:

• the agency you work for,
• the community that the risk assessment relates to or
• legislation or regulation that requires the assessment to be undertaken

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Context

The context will vary for all of you; and it will depend on your country, state, who you work for, the selected community, focus of your risk assessment and a number of other variables. This is where a lot of the information that you previously identified relating to establishing the context will come in useful. If you answer the following questions you should be able to describe the context of your risk assessment.

Risk evaluation criteria

At this stage you also need to consider the criteria against which you will evaluate the risks that you identify within your risk assessment. The criteria should be developed through interaction between all stakeholders. You may decide to base your evaluation on technical measures, economic standards, social acceptability, political acceptability, or other criteria relevant to your particular community, enterprise and hazard set.

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Resource Requirements

You need to figure out the resource requirements for your risk assessment-basically this means 'what do you need to get it done? You will need to document your project resource requirements in your first assignment, the Project Definition.

Documenting the resource requirements of your project, based on the tasks you have to undertake, resources that are needed for each task, resources that are available and where you will obtain any shortfalls will enable your project to run smoothly. There will also be less chance of your project stalling because of unidentified resources being unavailable.

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Timetabling

Now that you have established your aim, objectives, scope, authority, context and resources, you need to work out the times by which you should have completed the various parts of your risk assessment

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