
Public Safety Risk Assessments in Northern Ireland
We undertook a large-scale inspection project visiting a number of sites in Northern Ireland to provide a Public Safety Risk Assessment (PSRA) and an Initial Need Assessment for Screens (INA). Both PSRA and INA will allow the client to better understand what is required to ensure an asset is safe, providing greater efficiencies when carrying out improvement works.
- Client Amey Consulting/DFI
- Location Northern Ireland
- Services
Challenge
Health and safety are at the forefront of all our projects. We assessed the risk associated with the tasks required in this project and identified that lone working would be viable for the majority of the assets using our lone working process. The inspector will carry an iPad to complete the inspections that can be live-tracked by the office-based health and safety team. Some sites, such as coastal defences, may come with increased risks to an inspector, so two inspectors working together would be more suitable.
Solution
Once the inspections have been completed through DFI's power app, the assessments are then uploaded to a hosting website where a member of the office team can download the information and generate the final report.
At each PSRA asset, the inspector will score each element required with a severity score (1-5) and a likelihood score (1-5) which will be used to calculate the risk factor at each site. Then the inspector will add potential improvements at each site before rescoring the severity and likelihood to create an improved risk factor.
Once the inspector has completed the PSRA, they will then complete the INA for each culvert inlet/outlet.

Benefit
Carrying out PSRA assessments at each asset will ensure that health and safety are being considered across every Flood Risk Asset in Northern Ireland. This will also ensure any person working at the site, or any member of the public that accesses the site, will be safe to do so.
Initial Need Assessments are vital at inlets and outlets for flood risk purposes as well as health and safety. Adding a screen to an inlet can reduce the risk of blockage and damage caused by debris entering a culvert. Screens also prevent people from entering the culvert, which makes each culvert a safer asset.
Contact Craig Lucas for more information about this project.