Risk assessment and risk evaluation and the training of OHS professionals

The management of risks is a rational process and proceeds from identification to prevention. The purpose of this paper is to claim that this may not always be true and, actually, overdone rationalism may lead the professionals to give totally false recommendations to their clients. For successful OHS promotion, the concept of risk is also a social construct. The additional dimension of risk evaluation is, therefore, the determination of the acceptability of prevention of the undesired event. A mathematical approach where the size of the risk is determined and the priority of elimination is based on the size only may not lead to the correct evaluation of a risk. In some cases, people even seek risks. A minor slip, normally totally harmless, may become a critical factor. The protection therefore should not be a change of behaviour, but an error-tolerant, forgiving technical solution. OHS professionals should not only know about accidents and diseases, but should also understand more largely the laws of human behaviour, technology and life, in general. For the training of OHS professionals, this means that they should be experts of work as much as experts of the anomalies and abnormalities of work.