What is a Generic and Specific Risk Assessment?
This is a distinction that causes a lot of confusion, and it matters enormously when it comes to both legal compliance and practical usefulness.
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A generic risk assessment is one that covers a type of task or activity in general terms, without being tailored to a specific location, project or set of circumstances. For example, a generic risk assessment for working at height might cover the general hazards associated with ladders, scaffolding and mobile elevated work platforms — the common risks, the standard control measures, the typical precautions. It is a starting point and a framework.
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A site-specific risk assessment, by contrast, takes those general principles and applies them to a specific situation. It takes into account the actual location, the specific equipment to be used, the particular team carrying out the work, any unusual conditions or constraints at the site, and any site-specific rules or requirements imposed by the client or principal contractor. It is tailored, contextualised and directly relevant to the actual job at hand.
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Both have their place. Generic risk assessments are a perfectly legitimate and useful starting point, and many businesses maintain a library of generic assessments for their common activities. However, the legal standard requires risk assessments to be 'suitable and sufficient' — and a generic assessment that is used without any adaptation or consideration of site-specific factors will often fall short of that standard.
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This is particularly important in the construction and contracting sectors, where site conditions can vary dramatically from one project to the next. A principal contractor who receives a generic risk assessment that clearly has not been adapted for their specific site is unlikely to be impressed — and may have legitimate grounds to reject it.
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At LESH, we can help you develop a library of robust generic risk assessments for your common activities, alongside a clear process for producing site-specific adaptations for individual projects. This gives you the efficiency of having a solid foundation to work from, while ensuring that the final documents genuinely reflect the risks and controls relevant to each specific job.
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