[cleaning-team]

When doing a risk assessment how granular do you have to be on tasks? Can you use cleaning washroom as a task and then look at each of the risks or do you need to break it down to have a seperate risk assessment for washing the floor, cleaning the toilet, cleaning the sink and so on?

Thanks
Jason

[John Kelly]

A risk assesment should identify the risks associated with a particular task. They also need to be simple and not too long winded as people will not use them. If you were cleaning a whole building it should be easy to incorporate all the likely risks onto one sheet.
There is some useful info in the documents section on here.

[Anna 140]

Hi Jason,
A risk assessment should cover any possible risk to health within a working environment.

I am presuming you have employees! for this purpose your risk assessment needs to start as soon as your staff place one foot onto their place of work, for instance for domestic cleans, as soon as you open the gate to the clients property what risks can you spot (uneven paving slabs, missing manhole covers over hanging trees, animals, etc. note everything! I disagree with simple and not so long winded as people wont read it, if there is a risk assessment in place ( you always keep the origional  signed copy) if no-one reads it, then that is their choice, I strongly recommend this simply because we live in a society where people don't want to take responsibility for their own actions, Health and safety and plenty believe in non ethical ways of obtaining money such as suing. always cover your self, train each person who works for you on health and safety issues too, this can be done on site at a clean showing them to read risk assessments and teach them all about cosh etc, always cover your back. check out the business link website for info on legalities. I hope this helps

[Robert Parry]

Have to agree with Anna on this, R/A must take into account all risks, including, driving, pc use, chemical use (Cossh sheets are not enough) etc, etc.

The documents that John mentions would be useful as a starting point only, but none, in my opinion, would cover you if it had to be relied upon, should an incident occur.

Regards,

Rob

[cleaning-team]

Have to agree with Anna on this, R/A must take into account all risks, including, driving, pc use, chemical use (Cossh sheets are not enough) etc, etc.

The documents that John mentions would be useful as a starting point only, but none, in my opinion, would cover you if it had to be relied upon, should an incident occur.

Regards,

Rob

In the examples of tasks you have given above, assuming all the tasks were for one client and done by the same staff member(s), would you do a seperate RA for each task i.e. one for driving, one for pc use, one for cleaning washroom, one for vacuuming etc or combine them all into one RA for an individual client for example?

We currently have seperate ones but are finding so much repetition that we are looking at ways to simplify them and reduce the work taken to create and customize each one hence the question.

Thanks
Jason

[Anna 140]

no
each client has their own risk assessment of their property, go through their property room by room and note each risk you see, you cannot really assess risk on how someone works, that falls under training. however you can stipulate risks such as whether you require a person to use ladders you need to ascertain who is responsible for the equipment and if these are all fit for purpose, certain chemicals (refer to reading coshh labels on the packaging and your training) hoovers (anything electrical needs to be pat tested if you provide them) however you can get around this by stipulating that the clients responsible for the state of their own equipment and employees must search for risks and hazards before using any equipment. this All needs to be in writing within a cleaning plan, employees training etc, if a client is responsible for their equipment then their signature is also needed on the r/a also the employees need to sign something to state they will look for and report any risks to you but no you don't need to write the risks of each individual job on the R/A but you do need to train them to do each job then get them to sign to say they understand how you want them to do a job.  hope I have made it clearer for you.
also good things to put on R/As were is the the stop cock, gas and electric shut off switch. they need to be at the front so the employee knows where they are in an emergency
Anna

[John Kelly]

As well a supply business we also run a seperate restoration business doing fire and flood restoration, including sewage remediation and trauma scene cleaning established for 17 years. As you can imagine the risks associated in our field probably far outweigh any situations in the general cleaning sector.
We are accredited to Safe Contractor ( http://www.safecontractor.com/ ) so all our procedures, risk assesments and method statements have been rigourously examined and are done so on an annual basis.
What I was saying is that you should try to make risk assessments as user friendly as possible otherwise experience has taught me that staff tend to gloss over things and even just put what they think should be on there instead of actual risks. They do have to be comprehensive but I have seen some horendous examples over the years many of which were a hindrance to safety rather than enhancing it.