Copy & Paste Risk Assessments For School Excursions

In today’s risk tip we’re going to cover the copy & paste methodology for risk management. Now this is often used by people who really are not sure what they are doing or they are really time poor and it’s an easy way to get a job done. I do understand this and it’s something I have done before as well and it’s something that I have come unstuck on before as well and really learned from those mistakes.

So it’s really important even though we know your time poor that you really do look at some standing risks which can easily be copied and entered in to your risk assessment so you don’t have to recreate everything from scratch. But then you also have your dynamic and variable risks and this is where copy and paste comes completely unstuck.

You end up just copying and going, bang that will suit! It was last year’s. We are doing the same thing this year. However, the variable risks such as your people risks, your environmental risks have come change completely from one year to the next.

The group dynamics can be vastly different and the group dynamics for the group that you are taking this time could actually be the biggest risk and if you haven’t reviewed and assessed that effectively and you are just using last year’s then that’s where you can really come unstuck.
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So be careful in what you’re copying and pasting. In many ways those standing risks or those standard risks which do not change there is no worries with that at all. You can review them each year as part of your continuous improvement process but generally speaking they are ok to do. However really your dynamic variable risks you must assess each and every time to ensure that you are running great programs for your students that are memorable for all the right reasons.