NEBOSH Risk Assessment – Fair Warning (Don’t Blow It!)

You might be feeling that now the exams over and done with you can relax a bit when it comes to the risk assessment project. Consider this video as your fair warning that this is not the case.

It is true that before NEBOSH made the last raft of changes to the qualification, the pass rates for the ‘practical’ were much higher than for the exam. But things are different now and I would urge you to not get complacent about this part of the qualification. Before, you used to get a percentage score, which had to be over 60%, now – you either pass or fail.

So – how could you fail? This is going to sound extreme, but you can fail by making one simple mistake, error or omission. By that, I don’t mean there’s a single mistake you need to watch out for, I mean that you need to make sure you don’t make a single mistake.

For example, on page 8 of the guidance document NEBOSH provide, there’s a note instructing learners to put something like N/A if the learner has nothing to include in a column of the risk assessment chart – not to leave it blank. We had a recent learner who had to resubmit their entire project for re-assessment and the ONLY thing wrong with it is that they didn’t do this – they left an empty column.

Is it right that NEBOSH is being so stringent? That’s completely irrelevant to what matters – which is your success in achieving this qualification. Once you’ve got the qualification under your belt, you can philosophise all you like about the rights and wrongs of their approach. But by then – you probably won’t want to.

My strong recommendation is to use a checklist. NEBOSH did have one on their website, but I think it was removed when they published their latest guidance document. We’ll put a link to a copy of it in the description.

Go through each line ultra-carefully and make sure you only tick the line off if you have included EVERYTHING that NEBOSH have asked for. Be particularly careful with the lines that have more than one piece of information. For example, this line:

The general description includes: products manufactured/services offered; types of activities; shift patterns.

Could actually be four lines:

1. The general description
2. products manufactured/services offered
3. types of activities
4. shift patterns

Miss any of those from your general description and you’ll be resubmitting.

You might be thinking – we don’t do shift patterns, just normal office hours. Well – put that then, ie., 9.00am. – 5.00pm.

Another example:

Methodology used to include: sources of information, who was consulted and how you decided on the additional control measures

1. The methodology
2. sources of information
3. who was consulted
4. how you decided on the additional control measures

Again – miss any of those from your methodology description and you’ll be resubmitting.