Web-based Health & Safety Risk Assessment

All LU students must complete a risk analysis as part of any workshop assessment.

Dr Tyrer wants to develop an interactive web-based risk assessment analysis for health & safety requirements within the university, for use by staff, students and regulators. Nearly all departments have some contact with laser devices and the system fulfils a university and UK-wide need.

Through a practical question and answer based system, users will be led through examples of general heath & safety requirements and more specific regulations that they need to be aware of. The proposed system is not intended to teach students about risk assessment or management, it’s geared more towards guiding them through potential issues with their particular activity, and presenting them with the appropriate forms to complete. Dr Tyrer is happy to devote time to mapping out all the interactions.

This project will focus on laser safety, and will provide a useful case study for prospective future expansion. There is the potential to expand the system horizontally to all manner of workshop and lab activities, or any activity where a risk assessment needs to be performed.  Some of these areas (particularly the more general health and safety issues in chemical, electrical, etc) will be touched on by the proposed system anyway. 

Progress: 20%

A basic prototype has been produced to test the concepts being used. We are now in discussions about what form the risk assessments should be presented to the students.