Task risk analysis

A task risk analysis, TRA for short, breaks a task into steps, names what can go wrong at each step, and names the control that covers it. Where the organisation-wide risk inventory looks at the whole company, the TRA is about one concrete job. Its outcome often forms the basis of a work permit.

Non-routine work lacks the experience that makes routine work safe. The TRA forces somebody to think those steps through before any tool is picked up, and makes explicit which measure belongs to which risk.

The biggest gain sits in who writes it. A TRA written by a safety officer behind a desk misses the steps the workers actually take. Draw it up with the crew instead and you get a better document, and the exercise is itself the learning moment. On repeating project work it pays to turn the accumulated TRAs into training material, since the failure modes are already written down in them.