Maintaining awareness on the day ensures you are prepared for factors like weather, crowds, unforeseen events and changes to plans that may create new risks and/or change ones you’ve already identified.
To account for this, it’s a good idea to regularly remind your teams to think of what has changed (or could change) in tasks they are about to perform, and to always be aware of their surroundings. To make everyone safer, a quick run through of significant or uncommon risks associated with the task (eg a group going out to repair a piece of track) and an awareness of how they could be avoided should be completed before it’s started.
These activities should already be covered in your risk assessment, but this is a chance to remind people of the critical controls, their roles, the responsibilities that need to be assigned and highlight any factors that will make things easier or harder.
Some of the ways to do this are known as ‘Take 5’ or ‘Toolbox Talks’.
