Investigative Analysis of Safety Risk Assessment at a Science and Technology University: Step-by-Step Analysis with Accident Reports for Future Prevention

Abstract

Our university, Tokyo Institute of Technology, conducted safety and health risk assessments (RA). Previous research indicated that many hazards identified in RA are less likely to be the main causes of actual accidents, while those not identified in RA are more likely to be the main causes of actual accident. Particularly, notable cases not identified as hazards in RA and having more occurrences as actual causes were “glass” and “cutting tool”. Therefore, the objective of this study is to find out why these hazards have not been identified and what should be done to ensure fruitful RA implementation. Here, RA reports and accident reports of “glass” and “cutting tool” related work were intensively investigated. The findings demonstrated that in STEP 1, the “hazard identification” stage, the risk-assuming work should be much closer to the actual accident, that is, to increase the awareness of hazards in pre- and postexperimental work such as “force-applied” work, where previously a low proportion of assumptions had been made. In STEP 2, “risk estimation and assessment” stage, the following steps are required: assume the situation of damage caused by the risk-assumed work in a more concrete, rather than vague, manner, estimate and score the degree of damage at a higher level, determine the risk level as III or IV accordingly, and link this to the consideration and implementation of preventive measures. Lastly, in STEP 3, the “consideration of risk reduction measure and implementation” stage, countermeasures were to focus on worker-independent measures, such as the “intrinsic measure” and “engineering measure”.