1.1 What is risk assessment and its importance?

Risk assessment is the process of identifying hazards that could negatively affect an organization’s ability to conduct business or achieve its objectives. These assessments help to identify inherent and other risks and proffers measures, processes and controls to reduce the impact of these risks on the organization.

The importance of risk assessment include helping in the reduction of risk by the prevention of incidents that can lead to an accident, ensuring that the health and safety of personnel alongside the environment and assets are identified for potential hazards, acting as a basis for the approval of the oil spill contingency plan (OSCP) and to determine what measures should be implemented to mitigate those risks.