Published 31 Jan 2023
What is a Plant Risk Assessment Template?
A plant risk assessment template is used to identify risks in a plant and determine appropriate control measures. Inspectors and occupational health and safety officers mitigate plant risks by determining hazards, likelihood of incidents, severity of injury and damage to property at the onset. Aside from keeping workers safe, plants are required to comply with occupational health and safety legislation, and regular plant risk assessments help in maintaining safety standards within the facility.
Plant Risk Assessment Template
A plant risk assessment template is a tool used by inspectors and health safety officers to identify risks and determine control measures to be implemented in a plant. Inspectors can use this template to take photos of hazards, provide risk ratings, and recommend control measures. This plant risk assessment template has 13 categories to check for plant risks such as fire, suffocation, electricity, cutting, crushing, ergonomics, noise, temperature, and other possible risks in a plant. SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) templates can be edited to suit the needs of your business.
- Capture photos and make notes of issues found.
- Assign tasks to immediately correct urgent issues.
- Select the risk ratings
- Submit reports via weblink or PDF document.
In this article
- Common Plant Workplace Hazards
- Optimize Inspections with a Plant Inspection Software
- SafetyCulture: How It Helps Inspectors
- Take your Plant Inspection Process to the Next Level with SafetyCulture
- Top 3 Plant Risk Assessment Templates
Common Plant Workplace Hazards
While it is important to proactively perform scheduled pump inspections and keep pumps in good working condition to maintain uninterrupted operation, it is vital to first ensure that the inspectors are safe. Here are the vital items to check during a plant risk assessment and the common questions inspectors ask.
Work environment
- Is the ventilation poor?
- Are there confined spaces where workers cannot move properly?
- How is the lighting in the plant?
- Are workers exposed to constant loud noise?
- Is the floor clean and dry?
- Are ladders secure and do elevated spaces have guardrails?
- Is the workplace ergonomically designed? Are workers exposed to extreme temperatures?
Equipment, tools, and substances
- Is there appropriate machine guarding?
- Are chemicals labeled correctly, in their recommended containers, and properly stored?
- Are all tools in the working area in good working condition?
Performance of tasks
- Do workers have prolonged exposure to vibration?
- Is everybody wearing proper PPE?
- Is Lockout Tagout being followed?
- Are workers trained not only in the execution of tasks but also in safe working practices?
Optimize Inspections with a Plant Inspection Software
A plant inspection software is a digital tool used by plant inspectors when performing safety checks and risk assessments in fixed industrial facilities such as power plants, chemical plants, and factories.
The purpose of a plant inspection is to identify risk hazards that may result in worker injury and/or fatality, as well as prevent unexpected downtimes that may result in the interruption of operations.
With SafetyCulture as your plant inspection software, you can make safety inspections more efficient while automating reporting, and documentation. Perform different plant inspections with the help of a highly customizable mobile platform, and get a comprehensive look at your plant’s performance so you can make necessary adjustments to improve safety and quality.
SafetyCulture: How It Helps Inspectors
A plant inspector’s job involves a variety of safety checks to ensure that equipment, tools, and facilities used in industrial plants comply with safety standards. A successful plant safety initiative requires effective inspection templates, an efficient reporting and documentation process, and a sustainable system.
Below are some common tasks for plant inspectors, and how SafetyCulture can help in their accomplishment:
Asset Integrity Management
Asset integrity management involves safety inspections, maintenance tasks, and other activities designed to ensure that an asset retains its ability to function as designed and intended while being safe enough to operate. Assets, in this context, ranging from buildings and facilities to equipment and tools.
SafetyCulture lets plant inspectors customize templates to fit their inspection needs, ensuring that only relevant information is captured in order to maintain good asset conditions. Additionally, plant inspectors can assign actions to repair and maintenance personnel directly from the app whenever damage and severe wear are identified, ensuring that asset issues are resolved before they cause total breakdown.
Tank Inspection
Tank inspections are performed in order to identify tank damage, wear, and other anomalies that may contribute to safety hazards. Container tanks in industrial plants often contain hazardous substances, and it is important to keep them in good condition to avoid leakage and spills. Some common items to check during tank inspections are toxic substance residue, pipework condition, and tank rust and cracking.
With SafetyCulture, plant inspectors can take pictures of identified tank hazards during tank inspections and annotate them mid-inspection. The photos can be included in the final inspection report for evidence and documentation.
Pressure Vessel Inspection
A pressure vessel is a container designed to hold liquids and other substances at a different pressure compared to ambient pressure. Plant inspectors need to perform external inspections to ensure that insulation and corrosion-resistant coatings are in good condition, no gas, vapor, or liquid substances are leaking, and vessels are free of cracks, deformation, and defects.
Plant inspectors can take advantage of SafetyCulture’s ready-to-use pressure vessel inspection templates to perform comprehensive external and internal inspections, as well as assessments of safety devices and piping systems to ensure that all aspects and areas have been covered and verified for safe operation.
Pipeline Inspection
Pipeline inspections are conducted by plant inspectors and pipeline engineers to ensure the integrity of piping systems and avoid safety hazards such as leaks, pressure surges, and corrosion. Pipeline inspections cover pipe insulation and coating, measures against pipe corrosion due to atmospheric exposure, and other remedial measures including safety monitoring.
By using SafetyCulture for pipeline inspections, pipeline engineers can immediately assign corrective actions to repair and maintenance personnel as soon as hazards are identified. Each assigned action has a built-in chat so teams can easily collaborate to resolve issues ASAP. Pipeline engineers and plant inspectors can include corresponding photos, notes, due dates, and priority levels to help repair and maintenance personnel triage issues and resolve them efficiently.
Fitness for Service Inspection
A Fitness for Service Inspection (FFS) is the assessment of an asset’s working condition to determine if it is reliable enough for continued operation without jeopardizing safety and quality standards set by the RAGAGEP (Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering Practices)
Using the advanced analytics feature of SafetyCulture, plant inspectors can take advantage of the web dashboard in order to identify the best, and worst-performing assets across the organization. Plant inspectors can then zoom in using data search filters to review data from individual inspections in order to gain useful insights such as the best practices for optimal asset operation and apply them across the entire operation to improve safety and performance.
Take your Plant Inspection Process to the Next Level with SafetyCulture
Plant inspections help industrial plants comply with organizational and industrial safety standards. Aside from keeping workers safe, a good plant inspection process also increases operational efficiency by ensuring that assets and resources are in good working condition. Improve your safety and quality standards by downloading our ready-to-use plant risk assessment templates.
Top 3 Plant Risk Assessment Templates
General Risk Assessment Template
A general risk assessment form helps identify, assess and control hazards in any workplace. This template can be used anytime when assessing risk and determining control measures before the commencement of new tasks, implementation of new processes, or working in a new site. Document all hazards observed, provide an overall risk rating, and recommend control measures.
Bonus! ISO 45001:2018 Audit Checklist
An ISO 45001:2018 readiness checklist can be used by organizations to assess the occupational health and safety management system currently in place. Conduct internal audits to determine the readiness for third-party ISO 45001:2018 certification. Select “Ready”, “Nearly Ready,” or “More Work” for the items and track overall readiness score. This was adapted from SGS’s ISO 45001 readiness checklist.
