What Is a Take 5 Inspection?
Everyone will agree that the health and safety of workers are important. Thus, organizations should ensure that the workplace is safe before any work commences. Despite this, many shortcuts in safety have been done to get the job done faster. In the process of increasing productivity in the workplace, safety becomes compromised.
The Take 5 pre-job safety checklist helps organizations easily identify the risks and health hazards before work begins. By doing so, the work environment is safer, and accidents are prevented from happening.
The Take 5 inspection is conducted in various industries, including construction, shipping, mining, and more. This assessment involves each worker personally by rating the level of risk identified as a hazard.
In this article, the following points are explained:
1. What the Take 5 safety steps are
3. The advantages of a Take 5 inspection app
What Are the Take 5 Safety Steps?
Follow these simple 5 safety steps to check and improve the way you manage health and safety in the workplace at your organization:
- Stop and Think
- Look and Identify
- Assess the Risk
- Control Hazards
- Monitor Hazards
1. Stop and Think
The main goal of the Take 5 inspection is to eliminate or lessen the risks and prevent accidents from happening. Hence, it should be done even before you start working, especially if the workplace or the nature of the work is high risk. If you are already in the middle of work, you have to stop whatever you’re doing and take the assessment.
The reason for the interruption is to develop and ingrain mindfulness at work. Making this 5-minute interruption a daily part of the work routine can save organizations from committing costly mistakes and incurring serious injuries.
Some of the important questions in the assessment include:
- What are the tasks/activities you will be doing?
- What kind of equipment or machinery are you going to use to accomplish the task?
- What type of materials are you going to handle?
- Who are the other people involved in finishing the task?
- Where will the activity/task take place?
2. Look and Identify
This pre-job safety checklist step requires workers or the people in charge to look around the workplace and identify possible risks. Things that are considered hazardous are those that can put your life in danger.
At this step, list down the possible risks and describe anything you think is potentially dangerous or unsafe. Don’t disregard the small or minor elements. If you think they have the potential to cause harm or accident, list them down. Remember, even the smallest dust can blind someone.
3. Assess the Risk
After listing all the possible hazards, assess each of them. Two critical questions that you need to be asking are:
- How likely is it to injure someone in the workplace?
- How severe is the injury it will incur?
Don’t forget to ask these questions when determining the overall risk rating of a possible hazard.
Aside from using your judgment when assessing a potential hazard, use the Take 5 safety risk assessment matrix. It ensures that you will not overlook or forget anything during the assessment.
4. Control the Hazards
This step in the Take 5 Inspection process requires you to take action. Start by asking how you can reduce the risk of each specific hazard. By doing so, you’ll precisely determine the steps that need to be done to reduce the risk.
Since this pre-job safety checklist aims to control the hazard as soon as possible, providing the best solution at hand is vital. On the contrary, procrastinating or not doing anything to reduce the risk of a possible hazard can cost lives.
4. Monitor Hazards
After doing all the necessary steps to control the hazards, you can start doing the task. Just keep in mind that you will stop monitoring and identifying the hazards in your workplace because you have completed the safety check. Time will determine whether the steps you’ve taken are enough or appropriate for that particular hazard.
There is also a possibility that new hazards will emerge as you perform each task. Ideally, you should have identified the hazards during the Take 5 safety assessment. But it is also likely to miss some.
What Are the Methods of Hazard Control?
Employers are obligated to exercise due diligence and take all the necessary precautions to prevent accidents and injuries in the workplace. While laws clearly state how to control a hazard, some situations where the guidelines or limitations are unclear. It is wise to seek advice from an occupational safety professional in such cases.
However, the dilemma sometimes comes in the type of hazard control method that will be used. Choosing a method might consist of:
- Evaluation and selection of permanent or temporary controls.
- Implementation of temporary measures until a permanent solution is in place.
- Implementation of permanent controls when reasonably feasible.
Since no two hazards are alike, so do the control methods. Each hazard control program should be specifically designed to meet the needs of each workplace. Generally, however, there are 4 categories of hazard control:
- Elimination
- Engineering Controls
- Administrative Controls
- Personal Protective Equipment
1. Elimination
This method also includes substitution where you remove the hazard entirely or replace it with something (i.e., machine or equipment) that is less hazardous.
For example, use water-detergent solutions instead of organic solvents that can have harmful effects on the body. Or, instead of using leaded paints and pigments, substitute them with versions that have no lead.
2. Engineering Controls
This control method involves designing or modifying the workplace, equipment, processes, and systems that will reduce exposure to the hazard or the source of exposure.
3. Administrative Controls
These types of Take 5 safety controls involve changing how the work is done. It includes processes, policies, and work timing, among others. Under this category, work practices like standard operating procedures in different work areas and tasks might be altered to reduce the risks or hazard exposure.
4. Personal Protective Equipment
As the name suggests, this involves wearing protective equipment like noise-canceling gears to reduce noise exposure.
All of these hazard control methods can be applied at the source, at the worker, or along the path that the hazard “travels”.
Complete the 5 Take Steps Easily via an App
Streamline your Take 5 safety inspections with Lumiform’s mobile app. Eliminate paperwork and automate workflows for easier data collection and documentation.
Lumiform is a powerful inspection and audit mobile app that helps workers and project managers proactively manage workplace safety and quality – all from their mobile device or tablet. Use Lumiform for Take 5 inspection and be able to:
- Get started digitally instantly by using a template from the comprehensive library of over 12,000 expert-reviewed templates.
- Create your own Take 5 safety checklists using the flexible form builder, or simply drag and drop existing templates to fit your specifications.
- Take photos and add annotations as you perform your inspection. This way you can make your reports more vivid.
- Automatically generate inspection reports and track inspection frequency and performance.
- Analyze all collected data online via your dashboard and identify common risks in your organization.
- Store all reports securely in the cloud and automatically share them with colleagues in your organization.
