Why we Built R1SK

I’ve spent more than ten years in health and safety, and in that time I’ve read a lot of risk assessments. Some were excellent. Most weren’t. Not because the people writing them didn’t care. Usually they cared a great deal. The problem was the format: a Word template copied from the last job, a spreadsheet with forty columns, or a paper form in a folder in the site office that nobody had opened since it was signed.

R1SK is our answer to that. This first post explains what it is, why we built it, and what we’re trying to achieve.

The Recurring Problems

Over the years, the same four problems came up again and again.

• Too long to be any use on site. Assessments written to protect the business rather than the people doing the work. Twenty pages that nobody reads, so the one control that matters gets lost.
• An empty ALARP box. The residual risk is scored, but nobody has written down why it’s acceptable or who agreed to it.
• Actions with no owner. “Install barrier” sits in the further actions column for months, because nobody was named and no date was set.
• No idea which version was in force. Three copies on a shared drive, one on paper and one in someone’s inbox, all slightly different.

None of these are about effort. They’re about tools that make it easy to tick a box and hard to do the job properly.

What is R1SK?

R1SK is a digital risk assessment platform. You create, manage, approve and review risk assessments in one place, instead of in spreadsheets, Word documents and paper forms. It’s built around the HSE’s five steps to managing risk: identify hazards, assess the risks, control the risks, record your findings and review the controls. If you know how a good risk assessment should work, R1SK will feel familiar. It just takes the admin out of it.

A few things we cared about getting right:

• Your risk matrix, not ours. Most organisations already have a matrix in their safety policy. R1SK starts with a 5x5, but you can set it anywhere from 2x2 to 10x10, with your own likelihood and severity labels, so the score on screen means the same as the score on paper.
• ALARP that can’t be skipped. You set a maximum acceptable residual score. Anything above it can’t be completed until someone records why the risk is as low as reasonably practicable, and their name and the time are recorded with it.
• Actions with owners and dates. Every additional control can be assigned to a person with a due date, and tracked until it’s done.
• Reviews that actually happen. Once an assessment is signed off, the next review is scheduled, rather than relying on someone remembering.
• Core and dynamic assessments. The core assessment is the approved plan. A dynamic assessment is the quick check at the point of work that today matches what the plan assumed. You need both.

On the larger plans there’s also a live risk register, built from the residual risks in your completed assessments, and analytics so you can see where your risk actually sits.

Who we Are

R1SK was started by me, Matthew, and my wife and co-founder Megan.

My background is in health and safety and in building systems, which is a useful combination when you’re trying to fix a process that’s mostly stuck in Word. Megan brings years of rail safety experience and a real eye for design, which is why R1SK looks and feels the way it does. Our aim is that someone on site can pick it up without a training course.

Our Goal

Our goal is simple: make risk assessment simpler, and make good safety accessible to every organisation, not just the ones that can afford a consultant. In practice, that means a few things.

• Shorter, clearer assessments. A good assessment is one the people doing the work can read and follow. We’d rather help you write one page that’s used than twenty that aren’t.
• Decisions that are recorded. When someone accepts a residual risk, that decision should be visible, with a name, a reason and a date. That protects your people, and it protects you.
• Fair pricing. Plans start at £10 a month, and every plan includes the configurable matrix, ALARP and action tracking. Small businesses have the same legal duty to assess risk as large ones. They shouldn’t have to pay enterprise prices to do it well.
• No lengthy sales process. You can try R1SK in a private 24-hour sandbox with your own hazards and your own matrix, and decide for yourself. Then setup is all automatic, should you wish to buy - no need for lengthy sales processes.

We also want to be honest about what software can and can’t do. R1SK won’t assess your risks for you, and it doesn’t take on your legal duties. What it can do is make the right thing the easy thing: clear hazards, honest scores, controls with owners, and reviews that happen on time.

What’s Coming in the Future

This blog is where we’ll share practical advice from ten-plus years on site. Expect plain-English guides on HSE guidance, the law behind risk assessment, and the mistakes we see most often, along with news about R1SK as it develops.

If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover, or you just want to talk about how you manage risk assessments today, get in touch. And if you’d like to see R1SK for yourself, have a look at how risk assessment works in R1SK.