Health and safety risk assessments

All staff have obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld) to:

• eliminate risks to health and safety where possible
• minimise risks as far as is reasonably practicable where eliminating them isn’t possible.

The Health and Safety Risk Management Procedures [2.30.01] outline our approach to managing health and safety risks at UQ, including responsibilities of staff, supervisors and heads of organisational units.

We use the UQSafe-Risk system to manage health and safety risk assessments.

Log in to UQSafe

When to complete a risk assessment

Health and Safety Risk Assessment Procedure outlines when to complete a risk assessment. 

How to complete a risk assessment

Risk assessments must be completed by the person or people performing the tasks. Managers and supervisors are responsible for making sure this is done.

1. Determine whether a formal risk assessment is required.
2. Identify the hazards associated with the task or process.
3. Discuss it with your supervisors.
4. Draft a risk assessment in UQSafe-Risk (staff login required).
5. Send the risk assessment for peer review to get feedback from subject experts or your Workplace Health and Safety Coordinator (WHSC).
6. Submit the risk assessment to your supervisor for review and approval.

Approval

Supervisors must review risk assessments completed by their staff before approving them to make sure they provide correct and adequate information. Supervisors must ensure:

• all risk sources have been identified
• proposed treatments are current and effective.  

Auditing

To monitor quality, a sample of risk assessments are reviewed and audited by Workplace Health and Safety Coordinators (WHSC). They pay particular attention to risk assessments with high or extreme risk ratings. Within UQSafe this process is refered to as Risk Assessment Verification.

The UQSafe risk assessment verification guide (PDF, 272.7 KB) provides a checklist to help Workplace Health and Safety Coordinators (WHSC) audit a risk assessment.

Using the UQSafe-Risk system

See the UQSafe risk assessment guide (PDF, 352KB) for an overview of:

• commonly used functions
• fields included in risk assessments
• risk assessment and approval process.

For help with:

• loading the UQSafe system or other technical problems, contact the ITS Service Desk
• logging into UQSafe or specialist advice, contact Health, Safety and Wellness
• completing or approving a risk assessment, contact your area’s safety manager or Work Health and Safety Coordinator.

UQSafe Training Videos

Risk assessments before April 2017

Risk assessments completed before April 2017 may be located in the old UQ Risk Management Database. You can access these risk assessments in ‘read-only’ format. You can't create new risk assessments in this system.