Guide

Risk assessment in an apartment building or housing estate

The employer is the management, the workers are the caretaker and technical staff; the hazards gather in the shared areas.

Confirm the hazard class first

The depth of the assessment and the renewal interval follow from the workplace's hazard class. The class depends on the activity code and is not guessed; read it from the hazard class query tool on this site.

Who is the employer

A management that employs a caretaker, cleaning or technical staff is the employer in respect of those people. The duty sits with the building management and is not lightened by spreading it across the flat owners.

Shared-area hazards

Stairs and wet floors, poorly lit car parks and basements, automatic doors and barriers that can trap, and open covers. Refuse collection and carrying is written separately as a manual handling load.

Technical spaces

Boiler room, booster pump, generator, lift machine room and electrical panel. Who may enter, how unauthorised entry is prevented and the locking arrangement are part of the assessment.

Periodic inspections

Lift, extinguisher, lightning protection, earthing and boiler each have their own inspection interval, and their reports are kept in the building. Equipment past its inspection counts as high risk in the assessment.

Outside firms

Where grounds, cleaning, lift maintenance or facade work are bought in, that firm's workers are in the same space. The duty to coordinate and to inform stays with the management.

In Optifora

The risk assessment module gives this setting's hazard list as a starting point; you correct it with what you see on site, score it, and tie the control to a task with an owner. When the renewal date approaches, the reminder arrives on its own.

  1. Set the class and scopeConfirm the hazard class from the activity code and write down the areas to be assessed.
  2. Walk the siteWalk every area at the hour the work is done; ask the workers what they struggle with.
  3. Record the hazardsRecord every hazard you see, with its location and the number of people affected.
  4. ScoreScore with the method you chose; write down diverging views with their reasoning.
  5. Tie controls to tasksGive every control an owner and a date; re-score the residual risk once it is in place.
  6. Put renewal in the calendarEnter the interval the class requires; if there is an accident or a change, renew without waiting.

Manage this in Optifora

Optifora is not a single program but a compliance platform assembled from modules. The catalogue states which module is ready today and which is on the roadmap.

See what Optifora is