Advanced Occupational Health and Safety Risk Management Training Course

Course overview

Senior HSE practitioners are often expected to defend risk decisions across complex operations: process changes, contractor interfaces, occupational exposures, high-potential events and regulatory scrutiny. Routine risk matrices alone do not show how controls fail, which barriers are weak, or where investment will reduce risk most effectively. This course addresses the gap between basic hazard assessment and defensible, evidence-led risk management that can be presented to executives, regulators, workforce representatives and operational leaders.

Participants apply advanced methods for identifying material risks, analysing causal pathways, evaluating control effectiveness and prioritising action. The course covers ISO 45001 and ISO 31000 risk-management requirements, bow-tie analysis, barrier-based control assurance, task and process risk assessment, occupational hygiene exposure assessment, risk appetite, residual-risk decisions and leading indicators. Participants learn to build risk registers that support decision-making, test the quality of existing controls, investigate how changes introduce new hazards and communicate risk information through concise dashboards and assurance reports.

Delivery combines instructor-led technical sessions with worked industrial scenarios from construction, manufacturing, energy, logistics and facilities operations. Participants use BowtieXP, Microsoft Excel and structured risk-control templates to analyse a high-consequence scenario, map preventive and mitigative barriers, assign control owners and define verification activities. They leave with an applied Occupational Health and Safety Risk Management Action Plan, including a bow-tie model, improved risk-register entries, a control-assurance schedule and a practical 90-day implementation roadmap.

The course is designed for professionals who already contribute to risk assessments or safety management systems and now need to lead more rigorous risk reviews, assurance activity and risk-based improvement programmes.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a material-risk profile using ISO 31000 risk criteria, consequence definitions and likelihood calibration
• Develop a bow-tie analysis that links threats, top events, consequences, preventive barriers and recovery barriers
• Evaluate critical control effectiveness through performance standards, verification questions and evidence requirements
• Analyse occupational health exposures using exposure groups, exposure pathways and control-band assessment principles
• Redesign risk-register entries to record credible scenarios, existing controls, residual risk, owners and review triggers
• Apply management-of-change risk assessment to operational, organisational, equipment and contractor changes
• Create leading and lagging risk indicators that test barrier health rather than merely count incidents
• Produce a 90-day risk-management action plan with prioritised treatments, accountabilities and assurance milestones

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• HSE Managers — who must establish defensible risk-management processes across sites or business units
• Health and Safety Advisors — who lead complex assessments and need stronger methods than standard risk matrices
• Operational Managers — who own critical controls and must make informed residual-risk decisions
• Occupational Hygienists — who need to integrate exposure risks into wider operational risk registers and assurance plans
• Process Safety and Risk Specialists — who need a consistent barrier-management approach alongside safety-management systems
• Internal Auditors and Compliance Managers — who assess whether OHS controls are implemented, verified and effective

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience with workplace hazard identification, risk assessments and corrective-action processes, ideally gained in an HSE, operational, engineering or compliance role. The course assumes familiarity with basic likelihood-consequence matrices, hierarchy of controls, incident reporting and the purpose of an ISO 45001 management system. Participants should be able to read procedures, interpret risk-register entries and discuss operational scenarios. Prior use of BowtieXP is not required; guided exercises introduce its core functions. No statistics qualification, occupational hygiene certification, programming knowledge or prior auditing credential is required.

Training methodology

The five-day programme uses short technical briefings followed by facilitated analysis of realistic OHS cases, including confined-space work, chemical exposure, contractor interfaces and equipment change. Participants work individually and in small groups to calibrate risk criteria, build bow-tie diagrams, test barrier performance standards and improve weak risk-register entries. The instructor reviews decisions against ISO 45001 and ISO 31000 principles, highlighting common assurance failures. Each participant finishes by translating course outputs into a site-specific 90-day implementation plan for review with their manager.

Course outline

Day 1: Risk governance and material-risk framing

• ISO 45001 risk and opportunity requirements
• ISO 31000 principles, framework and process
• Material-risk identification across operational activities
• Credible scenario writing for OHS risk registers
• Risk criteria, risk appetite and tolerance thresholds
• Likelihood and consequence calibration beyond simple matrices
• Risk ownership, escalation routes and decision authorities

Workshop: Participants review a flawed site risk register and produce a prioritised material-risk profile with revised scenario statements and owners.

Day 2: Bow-tie analysis and barrier design

• Bow-tie terminology: hazards, threats, top events and consequences
• Preventive barriers and mitigative recovery barriers
• Escalation factors and escalation-factor controls
• Barrier independence and common-cause failure
• Critical-control identification and control-owner assignment
• BowtieXP model construction and visualisation
• Linking bow-tie outputs to operational procedures

Workshop: Participants build a BowtieXP model for a high-potential workplace event and define the critical barriers that require assurance.

Day 3: Control assurance and occupational health risk

• Control performance standards and verification criteria
• Field verification methods for critical controls
• Assurance mapping across frontline, management and audit layers
• Leading indicators for barrier health
• Similar exposure groups and exposure pathway analysis
• Control-band assessment for chemical and physical agents
• Integrating occupational hygiene data into risk decisions

Workshop: Participants create a critical-control assurance schedule and an exposure-risk assessment for a simulated maintenance operation.

Day 4: Change, contractors and risk-based improvement

• Management-of-change triggers and screening questions
• Risk assessment for non-routine and abnormal work
• Contractor risk interfaces and shared-control responsibilities
• Job safety analysis quality review techniques
• Root-cause links between incident learning and risk controls
• Risk treatment selection using effectiveness and feasibility criteria
• Action prioritisation through residual-risk and barrier-gap analysis

Workshop: Participants conduct a management-of-change workshop for a contractor-led plant modification and produce a risk-treatment decision log.

Day 5: Risk communication, reporting and implementation

• Risk-register data structures and quality checks
• Microsoft Excel risk dashboards and heat-map limitations
• Executive reporting for material OHS risks
• Communicating residual risk and risk acceptance decisions
• Control-assurance reporting and exception escalation
• Internal audit evidence for ISO 45001 risk controls
• Ninety-day implementation planning and stakeholder engagement

Workshop: Participants present a risk-management action plan containing a bow-tie summary, assurance measures, dashboard indicators and 90-day milestones.

Tools & standards covered

ISO 45001, ISO 31000, BowtieXP, Microsoft Excel

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions