HIRA: hazard identification and risk assessment, done properly

A hazard is anything that could cause harm: a rotating shaft, stored hydraulic pressure, a hot ladle, a solvent, a fall from a platform. Risk is the combination of how likely it is that someone is harmed and how serious that harm would be. The UK Health and Safety Executive puts it in one line: identify what could cause injury or illness, decide how likely it is that someone could be harmed and how seriously, then act to eliminate the hazard or control the risk.

HIRA is the name widely used for that process in Indian plants, and the name you will see in many EHS manuals, audit checklists and safety training courses. US plants usually call the same work a job hazard analysis or a risk assessment. The method is the same: break the work into activities, find the hazards in each, rate the risk, decide controls, and write it down so it can be checked and improved.

A good HIRA covers routine production work and the non-routine work where many serious incidents happen: maintenance, cleaning, changeovers, breakdown repair and contractor jobs. OSHA's recommended practices call out nonroutine tasks such as maintenance specifically, because they present hazards that normal operation does not.

OSHA's recommended practices tell employers to select controls according to a hierarchy that puts engineering solutions, including elimination and substitution, first, followed by safe work practices and administrative controls, and personal protective equipment last. The order matters because controls higher up work without relying on someone doing the right thing every time.

1. Elimination. Remove the hazard. Example: relocate a grease point outside the guard so nobody has to reach in.
2. Substitution. Replace it with something less hazardous. Example: a water-based cleaner instead of a flammable solvent.
3. Engineering controls. Isolate people from the hazard. Examples: interlocked guards, local exhaust ventilation, a fixed energy isolation point that takes a lock.
4. Administrative controls. Change how people work. Examples: procedures, permits to work, training, signage, job rotation.
5. PPE. Protect the individual. Examples: gloves, face shields, harnesses, respirators. Necessary, but the last line.

Avoid controls that create new hazards

OSHA also asks employers to check that a control does not introduce a new hazard. A guard that has to be removed for every adjustment will be left off. A respirator that fogs a visor creates a vision hazard.

Residual risk is what is left once the controls are in place. It is never zero. The HIRA record should state the residual score, the band it falls in, and who accepted it. If the residual risk is still above your acceptable band, the task should not proceed as planned.

Residual risk is only as real as the controls behind it. A control written in the HIRA but not present on the floor gives a false score. That is why the HIRA should link to the procedures, permits, inspections and training records that prove each control exists.

HSE's guidance says controls must be reviewed to check they still work, especially when there are changes in staff, a process, the substances or equipment used, when workers have identified problems, and after accidents or near misses. OSHA recommends evaluating hazards before changing operations, workstations or workflow, making major organizational changes, or introducing new equipment, materials or processes.

• An incident or near miss in the activity
• A new or modified machine, tool, chemical or process
• A change in layout, staffing or shift pattern
• New legal requirements or a new internal standard
• Inspection or audit findings that show a control is not working
• Worker concerns raised about the task
• The fixed review date, commonly once a year for high-risk activities

India

The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 consolidates central labor laws and repeals the Factories Act, 1948. Rules made under the repealed Acts stay in force where they do not conflict with the Code, until they are replaced, so check which rules your state has notified.

Section 6 of the Code requires every employer to keep the workplace free from hazards that cause or are likely to cause injury or occupational disease, and to provide plant and systems of work that are safe and without risk to health, along with the information, instruction, training and supervision employees need. For factories carrying on a hazardous process, Section 84 requires disclosure of information about dangers and the measures to overcome them, a detailed health and safety policy, and an on-site emergency plan approved by the Chief Inspector-cum-Facilitator.

The Code does not prescribe a single HIRA format. A documented HIRA is the practical way most plants show how they identified hazards and decided controls, and it is commonly expected in ISO 45001 management systems and customer audits.

United States

OSHA's Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs set out hazard identification and assessment as a core program element: collect existing information, inspect the workplace, identify health hazards, investigate incidents, plan for emergency and nonroutine work, and characterize and prioritize hazards by severity, likelihood and exposure. These are recommended practices rather than a single mandatory standard, but specific OSHA standards, such as the lockout/tagout standard, require controls that a good assessment will point to.

The EHS module in MaintenanceIQ is licensed and switched on per site. It includes a HIRA register that computes the risk score, assigns the band and acceptability, and records controls against the hierarchy of controls. The same module holds work permits with gas tests and named crew, lockout isolations with personal locks, incidents, and CAPA actions, so the controls a HIRA calls for can be traced to the records that show they happened.

Because the EHS registers sit beside maintenance work orders and machine history, a hazard found during a repair and the control that fixed it stay on the same record. See the EHS module for the full list of registers.