Risk Assessment !

M

MacMan

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I was at the AGM of our owners association at the weekend and couldn’t believe it when the subject of “Risk Assessments” was brought up for our Rallies. The guys who brought it up were well meaning – just really passing on guidance from the RYA. But this is the kind of rubbish I have to put up with at work and go sailing to avoid.

A typical rally for us might be might be

1. Meet in Portsmouth
2. Sail to the Folly for dinner and a beer
3. Sail home.

Hardly Ellen/Joyon material?

Are skippers not capable of making their own assessments of boats, crew and conditions? Has anyone calculated the risk of “drowning” in paperwork !

Have others had this meaningless bureaucracy foisted upon them at the yacht club/association?

I can’t be the only one who detests this encroachment in to their leisure time ?

I will be most disappointed if I don’t get a 100 post reply to this ;-)
 
is it really an encroachment of corporate bureaucracy into leisure time? Will the new rally be radically different to the old one? Or is it simply an encroachment of corporate vocabulary with no real change to how things are done?

Sensible Planning vs Risk Assessment - no real difference between the two. The former has been done for years, the latter often makes peoples toes curl.
 
The big difference is in the old regieme the Skipper took the complete resonsibility for his vessel and crew. Now we, a rally organiser, are expected to take some responsibility for assessing the risks. I explicitely *excluded* this from Rallies I organised in the past. I said I am going from a to b and you are welcome to join me. Here is some helpful information but it is your (the individual skipper) responsibility to check the info provided, you boat, your crew the weather etc ad infinitum.

Once I take on this resonsibility (which I personally just will not) where does it stop ? I am not inspecting somebody else's boat to check their flares are in date ?
 
I respectfully disagree.
It is NEVER anyone but the skipper's decision whether or not to sail, and where to sail to. This is absolute.

If you're worried about the rally getting in trouble legally then I would have thought that stating that in black and white should be fine.
 
So I completely agree with you it should be like this but - playing devils advocate.

If it is the Skipper's decision why do I have to complete a risk assessment for him/her ? The skipper knows his boat & crew and capability more than I so he is the correct person to assess risks and make decisions NOT me.

Whether or not the skipper documents their risk asssessment I leave up to them...

If they want my input (now there is a corporate term for you!) and potential local knowledge they are of course more than welcome to it and indeed have recieved this in the past. But I do not want to assess the risk for anyone but my vessel and my crew.
 
I see no reason why you couldn't or wouldn't give local knowledge or other advice if asked for.....
BUT...!
It is only ever the skipper's responsibility to decide to sail or not sail, anyone who does not get that should not be in charge of a boat.
As far as a risk assessment went, I'm pretty sure that putting that in writing and stating it at any briefing would be fine.
 
Can you give an example? What are you being expected to do? Over burdening bureacracy can often arise from what is often only general guidance, because it is interpreted to narrowly.

It seems reasonable, and is certainly part of the sailing tradition, that a skipper should take responsibility for the safe conduct of this boat and crew.

Is it possible to still act in the spirit of the guidance or advice without having all the red tape?

As flaming points out, I would have thought that your responsibility is simply to remind the skippers that it is their decision whether or not to sail (not that they should need reminding of this, and it shouldn't really be your responsibility).
 
Whilst I have no legal training I understood that if you provide a service then you have a duty of care towards your customers. If money has changed hands then you have customers Even if this is only the membership fee for your organisation - hence as I understand it the RYA advice. On the other hand many of the commercial rallies have set out in weather that did not seem appropriate because of the pressure of fixed dates. I am sure that the organisers of these rallies carry insurance against legal action being taken. Does your club or organisation or do you personally have cover? Can YM comment on this? They organise rallies.
 
Obviously you will need to get a written risk assessment from each participating skipper. The organiser would then have to compose their own risk assessment, which should include the risk of getting a number of participants' written risk assessments stuffed up their rs. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif
 
The "problem" (not that there is one really, but the legal community see a cash cow waiting to be milked) is that when you (the organiser) start giving information on things like Tides, Weather, local facilities and even chartlets then you (the organiser) have a duty of care to the receiver, and if the receiver has an incident rising from the use of the information that you (the organiser) provided which results in an insurance claim, then his (the receiver's) insurance company will try and apportion blame on you (the organiser) and claim damages ...

You will note that the SB Cherbourg dinner in September is just that - a dinner in Cherbourg .. how, what, why and to some extents - when ... is totally up to the skipper of each vessel.
Our club rallies are pretty much similar - place, date and time of the meal - the rest is up to the skipper - just how it should be!
 
That sounds about right. i think the most effective thing a club committee could do is to encourage a good seamanlike approach in all its members (which they often do by awarding annual prizes etc at dinners), and leave the detail to the skippers.

My suggestion for meeting your health and safety obligations is to award the AvastMark prize for seamanship at your next club rally. Given to the Skipper and Crew that file the least amount of paperwork.
 
Your biggest risk lies with novices/people who claim to have skills they don't have and whether the organiser should have known this. It all comes down to what a "reasonable skipper/person" would do ? Would this reasonable person have thought of the risks etc. It's all rubbish anyway as Darwinian selection used to be able to do its thing well before "elf and safety got involved". So in essence you make no warranties to participants and get them to acknowledge that they "join in" based on their own view of risks and that their ability is up to it. Probably a brief scribble is all that is required to cover the organiser. Sadly in days before we were assumed not to have any operational grey matter, all of this was taken as read and not required.
 
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So in essence you make no warranties to participants and get them to acknowledge that they "join in" based on their own view of risks and that their ability is up to it.


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Why that may be enough to keep you from the lions mouth, it doesn't help prevent an inexperienced skipper from finding themself, crew and boat in, possibly grave, trouble.

There is to much emphasis on people trying to meet a legal obligation when what is important is to ask what is the most effective thing I can do to make sure this event passes as pleasantly and safely as possible. Generating lots of paperwork and get out clauses is unlikely to do that.

If there is concearn for a novice member I'm sure it would be more effective for a diplomatic and well thought of club member to have a quiet word and come up with some sensible ways of addressing the issue. Incidently, filing a passage plan in triplicate probably isn't one of them.
 
I agree with you entirely as you are using the common sense approach which should be sufficient to cover all eventualities. Sadly in the day and age that we live in it is insufficent to keep the litigious types at bay. We are in an age when British Airways is being sued for the trauma caused by the Heathrow 777 engine failure when no one was seriously hurt. No piece of paper can ever substitute for proper judgment but it can protect you as the organiser from some of the more unpleasant outcomes that can arise in today's culture.
 
I can't give you an example - after the discussion at the at the weekend the committee is taking away to think through the format of the form. It seem to be based on some sort of RYA proforma which I can't find on the web. Anyone else come accross something similar at their club/associaiton ?
 
Most of the rallies we organised were in the pre-risk assessment days. I did not produce risk assessments for any of the Classic Yacht Rallies or Triangle Races I helped arrange.

Th last one we did entirely off our own bat was a small one for our centenary in 2006. Perhaps I shouldn't admit that no written risk assessment existed for this event. No money changed hands; skippers were invited to join us at a particular place and time; two cruises in company were organised.
Had I produced a written risk assessment what should I have covered, and who should I have presented it to?

The rallies we have been involved with more recently have been organised by other people and merely 'supported' by YM. I have no idea whether the organisers (Blue Water Rallies and World Cruising) had written risk assessments or whether they were shown to 'our people'.

We also support the RYA Sail Cruising Rally each year and it is probable that they (the RYA) produce a risk assessment. They may well have guidance notes for clubs in this matter.
 
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If money has changed hands then you have customers Even if this is only the membership fee for your organisation - hence as I understand it the RYA advice. On the other hand many of the commercial rallies have set out in weather that did not seem appropriate because of the pressure of fixed dates. I am sure that the organisers of these rallies carry insurance against legal action being taken. Does your club or organisation or do you personally have cover?

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No charges are made for the Rallies, the club does charge a modest membership fee to cover admin and ironically enough their club level insurance. I am not sure what you could ever claim for on this insurance. If I am a participate in a Rally and hit another boat I would expect my personal insurance to cover this - not the clubs.
 
MacMan, I ask because its not yet clear to me what you've been asked to do. Your orginal post talks about drowning in bureacracy, and from reading the other posts it seems that you've been asked to produce additional paperwork, but you've not said this explicitly.

What exactly is the problem you are facing? Have the RYA asked you to perform a written risk assessment for each boat? Which seems to be the case, reading between the lines of other posts in this thread.
 
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No piece of paper can ever substitute for proper judgment but it can protect you as the organiser from some of the more unpleasant outcomes that can arise in today's culture.


[/ QUOTE ]

I have no knowledge of the legal system, courts, litigation etc. But I simply don't believe that the small print of a peice of paper can keep you from jail. If I was a judge or jury I simply wouldn't be convinced that, if there was evidence of a systematic failure of health and safety, people should be absolved from responsibility by a turn of phrase.

I'm sure, or at least I hope, the legal system supports a demonstrated and practical effort to improve health and safety, and does not simply want to see the boxes ticked. Of course I may be wrong. I hope not.

Of course, the lawyers make try to convince people otherwise, but ultimately they aren't making the decisions.
 
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