Risk Assessment Checklist

About this template

When to use it

Article 36 of Korea’s Occupational Safety and Health Act requires an employer to find the hazards in the workplace, judge how serious the risk is, and plan and carry out measures to reduce it. This three-page form records that work. It is built to be printed and marked by hand on site, and the running header reads “Risk assessment RA-01 · keep the results and the supporting evidence for 3 years”.

The form enforces one sequence: find the hazards, score them, plan controls, then score what is left. STEP 1, STEP 2 and STEP 3 are that sequence.

What is in the file

• An overview table — Assessment date · Assessed by · Process assessed · Assessment timing (□ Initial □ Ad hoc □ Regular □ Continuous).
• A Progress summary of four cards — 3 stages, 9 items, ____ / 9 and ____ % — over a how-to-fill note.
• STEP 1 Identifying hazards / STEP 2 Estimating and deciding the risk / STEP 3 Controls and residual risk. Each stage has a six-column table — Checked · No · Check item · Owner · Control due · Notes (reason for follow-up) — and a stage-result line.
• Ⅰ. Processes assessed (by unit task) / Ⅱ. Target metrics check / Ⅲ. Implementation check by period / Ⅳ. Corrective action log / Ⅴ. Final assessment and sign-off / Ⅵ. Inspection history (by round).
• A footer carrying the criteria: “● Compliant : no defects ● Needs action : recheck after fixes ● N/A : out of scope”.

Filling order

1. Mark Assessment timing in the overview first: Initial the first time round, Ad hoc when a machine, substance or method changes, Regular the annual cycle, Continuous the day-to-day repetition.
2. STEP 1 — break the process into unit tasks, then write the hazards. The sample, “No guardrail on the aerial work platform — fall”, pairs a condition with an outcome. A condition alone leaves no record of what the danger actually was.
3. STEP 2 — split the same hazard into likelihood and severity and multiply. The sample format is “Fall : likelihood 3 × severity 4 = 12 (not acceptable)”.
4. STEP 3 — write the control and then score it again afterwards, as in “Fit guardrails and harnesses → 3 × 2 = 6”. That remaining number is the residual risk.
5. Reset the four Target standard cells in Ⅱ — Hazards identified 15, Not acceptable (12 and over) 4, Controls planned 100%, Residual risk target 6 or below — to your own workplace’s figures.
6. In Ⅳ. Corrective action log, carry the item numbers straight across from the STEP tables. The numbering has to run continuously or nothing can be traced later.

Scores, and the order of controls

• Likelihood 1 to 5 times severity 1 to 5 caps at 25. The sample treats 12 and over as not acceptable, but the acceptance threshold is the workplace’s own to set. A three-band judgment or a checklist method is equally valid under the Act.
• Controls have a ranking: eliminate or redesign the task, substitute something less dangerous, engineering controls such as guarding, administrative controls such as procedure and training, and only then personal protective equipment. An assessment that starts at protective equipment is usually rewritten.
• The workers who actually do the task have to take part in the assessment. Recording their names in the Owner column of Ⅰ turns that participation into evidence.

How to use Ⅲ. Implementation check by period

The left column reads Initial assessment · Ad hoc assessment · Regular assessment · Continuous assessment — assessment timing, not calendar periods. Put the number of processes assessed in that mode into Plan and Actual and mark the achievement boxes. Over a year, this table alone shows which mode was skipped.

Ⅵ. Inspection history stacks the date, the overall assessment and the next due date round by round — the evidence that the regular cycle was kept.

Common mistakes

• Writing the controls and leaving the residual risk empty. With no remaining score there is no way to tell whether the control was enough.
• Doing it once and filing it. After an accident or a near miss, that process is reassessed immediately.
• Reading this page as legal advice on your statutory duties. It is not. The duty here is the employer’s under Korean occupational safety and health law; where you are unsure how it applies, ask a qualified safety professional or the competent authority.