Task Based Risk Assessment Provides ‘Voice of Factory Floor’

When assessing the safety risks of a work task, the devil is in the details, and who knows the details better than the employees who perform the task.

That is one of the guiding principles behind Task Based Risk Assessment, or TaBRA for short. It can be thought of as the “voice of the factory floor” and is a very important tool in the safety pro’s kit because it quickly and efficiently determines the risk of a particular task.

Several things differentiate this method from the typical Job Safety Analysis or Job Hazard Analysis:
• The worker leads the process by walking through every step of his or her job
• TaBRA captures each step, including pushing of buttons on a control panel or human machine interface.
• This detail includes actions that clearly involve no hazard but are necessary for completion of the task
• TaBRA typically captures 2-3 times as many steps as estimated by a knowledgeable worker and is more detailed than a JSA
• TaBRA facilitates discussion about variables that could occur and create problems. Practitioners often realize that a JSA or JHA might not have captured these tangential issues
• After all steps are identified, the team uses a risk matrix from ANSI B11 to identify the risk for each element of the task

Importantly, if the task requires power for some step of the task, TaBRA captures that without discussion of the hazard or risk. That discussion happens only after all steps of the task are identified. I find that employees quickly accept this method because we are not engaging in discussion of OSHA, policy, hazards, is Lock Out/Tag Out necessary, etc. Discussion of these topics often makes workers glaze over and not feel part of the debate.

Workers know the steps of their tasks, and TaBRA allows them to walk through those steps without interruption. Workers are also actively involved in identifying both severity and probability of injury for each step of the task.

My experience has shown that management and safety personnel tend to focus on the hazards of machine motion and sometimes overlook the very real hazards associated with material handling, slips and trips, lifting, etc. TaBRA looks at everything and captures the worker’s perspective of what is really hazardous.

TaBRA is particularly useful when trying to determine whether full lock-out/tag-out or the alternative measures of minor servicing apply. Because the method is recognized by OSHA, it provides management with a powerful tool to properly assess risks and then provide appropriate safeguarding that allows the task to be done safely.

If your organization is caught in never-ending debates about whether full LOTO is necessary, you might find TaBRA is the answer to your dilemma.