Study IOSH Working Safely by rehearsing the full decision chain: name the hazard, describe the risk in likelihood and severity terms, then choose the highest-level control the situation allows. Worked scenarios, a hazard walk with a self-check rubric, and a short structured preparation sequence build that chain into habit — practise the decode in writing using the free practice questions linked below. Administrative details such as current course format and assessment arrangements belong to the issuer; check IOSH directly at iosh.com for those.
Telling hazard and risk apart when a scenario mixes both
A hazard is something with the potential to cause harm; risk combines how likely that harm is with how severe it could be. Answering any scenario goes more smoothly when you separate the two before choosing a response.
Practise the separation with plain examples. A trailing cable across a walkway is a hazard: it has the potential to trip someone. The risk, however, depends on the situation around it — how many people walk that route, whether lighting is good, and whether the cable is taped down. Change those surrounding factors and the risk changes while the hazard stays the same. When you read any item, label which phrase names the potential source of harm and which phrases describe likelihood or severity.
The practice scenarios in this guide deliberately mix the two in a single sentence, because that is exactly what you need to unpick. Compare 'water on the floor near a busy entrance' with 'water in a locked, empty storeroom'. The hazard is identical in both; the risk is not, because foot traffic differs. A useful drill is to take five hazard nouns from your course materials — water, dust, height, noise, chemicals — and write one full risk statement for each, naming who could be harmed and how likely and how serious the harm would be. If you cannot write the risk statement, you have found the hazard but not yet understood the problem the scenario is asking about.
Choosing controls in the right order, not the easiest one
The hierarchy of control ranks measures from removing the hazard entirely down to protecting the individual with equipment. When a scenario asks for the best control, work down the hierarchy and stop at the highest level the situation allows.
The hierarchy exists because controls differ in how they treat the hazard itself. Higher-level controls eliminate the hazard or reduce it at the source, so they keep working even when people are rushed, forgetful, or new. Lower-level controls accept that the hazard remains and rely on procedures, training, or equipment worn by a person to limit exposure. That reliance is the weakness: a rule or a warning sign only reduces risk as long as everyone knows it, follows it, and is monitored doing so.
This creates a recurring tension in scenario items. The easiest and most visible option — hand someone a piece of protective equipment or tell them to 'be careful' — is usually the lowest level on the hierarchy, and scenarios that ask for the most effective control are pointing higher. Train a two-question check for every option you consider: does this remove or reduce the hazard at source, or does it only shield the person from it? If it only shields, keep looking up the hierarchy before you settle on it. The table below makes the ordering concrete.
| Level | What it does | Work-at-height example | Watch-out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elimination | Removes the hazard completely | Do the task at ground level instead of height | Sometimes dismissed as impractical before it is properly considered |
| Substitution | Replaces the hazard with something less dangerous | Use a lower-height access platform instead of a ladder where possible | The substitute must genuinely be safer, not just different |
| Engineering controls | Physically separate people from the hazard | Guardrails and edge protection around the work area | Needs installation and maintenance, so it is easy to skip in quick answers |
| Administrative controls | Manage exposure through procedures, training, and signs | Permit-to-work rules and briefings for the height task | Relies entirely on people following it every time |
| PPE | Protects the individual only | Harness and helmet for the person at the edge | Last resort: the hazard is unchanged for anyone unprotected |
A three-step decode for every scenario, with a worked spill example
Work each scenario in three moves: name the hazard, describe the risk in likelihood-and-severity terms, then pick the highest-level control the situation allows. This turns a story into a structured decision.
Worked scenario one: a cleaning machine leaves a wet floor beside the main entrance of a busy depot, and pedestrians walk through within minutes. One tempting answer is 'put up a wet floor sign'. That is not wrong as a step, but it sits low in the hierarchy: a sign is an administrative control that assumes everyone reads and obeys it while the hazard stays in place. The better decision sequence is to stop the source — clean the spill promptly or contain the leak — and reroute pedestrians in the meantime, with the sign used only as a short-term interim warning.
Why the distinction matters: the sign accepts the hazard and manages people around it, while cleaning and rerouting remove or reduce the exposure itself. Practise the decode on paper until it is automatic. Step one, write the hazard in a short phrase. Step two, write the risk as 'who could be harmed, how likely, how severe'. Step three, list two or three candidate controls, rank them by hierarchy level, and choose the highest feasible one. Well-built scenarios also embed information about the people involved — a new worker, a visitor, a contractor — because who is exposed affects both the risk and the control you can reasonably rely on.
Responsibilities and safe behaviour: whose job is which part
Responsibility is shared. Organisations provide safe workplaces, systems, information, training, and supervision; individuals follow the controls they were trained on, use equipment as instructed, and report hazards and near misses.
Placing a duty with the right party is rich material for practice drills, so learn both sides of the bargain explicitly. The organisation side covers providing a workplace, plant, and systems of work that are safe; assessing the risks of what it asks people to do; supplying information, instruction, training, and supervision; and providing protective equipment where it is needed. The individual side covers cooperating with those arrangements: following the training received, using the controls and equipment provided as intended, not interfering with safety measures, and speaking up when something is wrong.
The reporting duty deserves specific attention because near misses — events that could have caused harm but did not this time — make excellent scenario material. Reporting a near miss is not bureaucracy for its own sake: it gives the organisation the chance to find and control a hazard before the next occurrence causes actual injury. When you read a scenario where a worker notices something dangerous, check whether the sensible action is to fix it directly (if competent and authorised), to report it so someone competent can act, or both. Answers that involve quietly working around a problem, or ignoring it because nobody was hurt, are never the constructive choice.
Matching controls to common hazard families, with a height example
Different hazard families respond to different controls. Grouping hazards into families — slips and trips, height, electricity, manual handling, machinery, substances — lets you recall the typical control pattern for each instead of treating every scenario as new.
Build a one-line control pattern per family and test it against scenarios. Slips and trips point to housekeeping, spill control, and clear walkways. Electricity points to isolation, inspection, and competent persons rather than improvised fixes. Manual handling points first to reducing the load, the distance, or the frequency — mechanical aids before technique training. Machinery points to guarding and isolation before warning labels. Substances point to finding out what the substance is, then ventilation and containment before gloves and masks. These patterns are not rules that replace thinking; they are starting positions that the hierarchy then orders.
Worked scenario two: a sign needs repairing on a wall about three metres up, and the suggested fix in the item is 'send someone up a ladder with a harness'. The trap is jumping straight to protective equipment and climbing. Applying the hierarchy first asks whether the work at height can be eliminated — for example, can the sign be removed and repaired at ground level, or reached with a long-reach tool from below? Only if work at height is genuinely unavoidable do you move down to engineering controls such as a stable access platform with edge protection, and then to procedures and personal protection as supplements, not as the headline answer. Choosing elimination first is the better decision, and it matters because a harness protects one person while removing the height entirely protects everyone on site.
A hazard walk exercise with expected drifts and a self-check rubric
Do an observation-only hazard walk in any ordinary environment, log ten hazards, and score your own log against a rubric. Use the rubric to expose a predictable drift toward low-level controls.
Choose a place you may lawfully observe — your home, a public area, or your workplace if observation is permitted — and walk it once looking only for hazards, then a second time writing for each one: the hazard, who could be harmed and how, a rough likelihood and severity, and the best control you can justify. Observation only: do not touch, move, or test anything, and if you see something genuinely urgent at work, report it through your normal channel rather than investigating it yourself. Ten hazards is a realistic target that pushes you past the obvious first finds.
As you score your log, check for two predictable drifts: a first list made up only of visible trip hazards and things that look dirty or broken, and first-choice controls clustered at the PPE and signage end of the hierarchy. Hazards without a visible cue — noise, posture, stored substances, repetitive tasks — tend to appear only on a deliberate second pass, so if your list has none, walk the space again looking for invisible hazards. Score each entry with this rubric, one point each, and let the failing lines tell you what to drill.
- Rubric line 1: hazard named as a source of harm, not a vague 'messy area' condition.
- Rubric line 2: risk statement identifies who could be harmed and the mechanism of harm.
- Rubric line 3: likelihood and severity judged as separate judgements, not merged into 'dangerous'.
- Rubric line 4: chosen control is at or above the administrative level of the hierarchy.
- Rubric line 5: one-sentence justification for why no higher-level control was reasonably available.
A two-week preparation sequence and concrete readiness checks
Split preparation into concept building, scenario drilling, and consolidation. Spend the first stretch on definitions and the hierarchy, the middle stretch on timed scenario decodes, and the final stretch on your weakest rubric lines.
A realistic adaptable sequence: days one to three, learn the hazard/risk distinction and the five hierarchy levels, writing your own example for each level from an environment you know. Days four to eight, do two or three written three-step decodes per day from practice questions such as those in our free practice set, always showing the hazard, the risk statement, and the ranked controls — the writing is where weak reasoning becomes visible. Days nine to eleven, run the hazard walk exercise and re-score yourself against the rubric. Days twelve to fourteen, return to the decodes you got wrong, rewrite them, and finish with a full pass through flashcards on definitions only, checking that you no longer need the card to recall the concept.
Treat the readiness checks below as learning milestones rather than predictions of any assessment result. If any check fails, the fix is targeted: a failed hierarchy ordering points you back to the table in the second section; a failed near-miss explanation points you back to responsibilities; a slow decode points you to more untimed practice before you attempt any timed work. Keep every practice decode on paper, because the chain hazard-to-risk-to-control is exactly what scenario practice rewards, and a chain you can only say out loud tends to fall apart under time pressure.
- Readiness check 1: define hazard and risk in one sentence each, without notes, and give a fresh example of each.
- Readiness check 2: write the five hierarchy levels in order from memory and attach a different everyday example to each.
- Readiness check 3: for five unseen scenarios, pick a control and justify in one sentence why the level above it was not used.
- Readiness check 4: explain in two sentences why near-miss reporting reduces future risk.
- Readiness check 5: complete a full three-step decode in writing, in your own words, without consulting the course text.
References and further reading
Use these references to explore the concepts and check the latest information from the relevant organizations.