Highdown Solutions is the trading name of Highdown Management Services Ltd which was founded in 2009 to help businesses organisations just like yours.

Our chief expertise is in Quality Management and Integrated Management Systems in the service sector.

These include contact centres; public sector activities including emergency services; all types of professional services and consultancy activities including sustainable organisations; learning, development, educational, heritage and curatorial organisations; consultancies and other businesses supporting the built environment including those delivering facilities and project management.

With our concept we take you on a journey with as many destinations as you choose.

If you have Quality Management or Integrated Management Systems learning and development requirements we can advise, devise and deliver on all or any of these.

We can also advise upon on a wide range of risk management learning and development programmes including sustainability, business continuity, emergency planning, security vetting and controls as well as strategic fire and life safety, all tailored to your particular expectations.

We can also conduct a gap analysis to help determine your current learning and development status and where you want to be.

Painters understand the relationships between the natural and built environment in a landscape.  So should health, safety and environmental professionals.  Whilst not necessarily a key factor in determining a risk matrix, the physical setting and limitations of a site is something important to consider.  Integrating the assessment of safety, health and environmental risks is often an appropriate approach to take with topographical and land use information.

The first obvious point with risk assessment is conducting a site tour – not just the offices, plant and machinery – but the whole site. Environmental auditors understand this concept but it can equally apply to health and safety. For example, are there public rights of way across the site bringing visitors? Are there arterial roads or railway lines nearby?  Are there physical features that create higher than normal risks e.g. uneven land surface; waterlogged grounds etc?

Local knowledge of the area can inform the risk assessor’s judgment e.g. contaminated land risks or, perhaps, we know the site is downwind of a chlorine plant?  Especially in rural or urban locations, researching generic sources such as Ordinance Survey maps can give much useful information that would impact on such a risk assessment approach as well as more specific information .

These other sources of research could include environment search reports (often commissioned if the site has recently been subject to a property transaction) and these can also provide invaluable historical detail of land use that might indicate unknown hazards such as underground workings and contamination as well as highlighting meteorological information.   Also, the landlord or managing agent for the site may have a drainage plan and there may be geotechnical or other land survey reports that could indicate particular hazards and operational limitations pertaining to the site.

Factors that might be highlighted in this research could include watercourses, stormwater drainage egress that could create life safety risks in the event of pollution; old mine working; the porosity of underlying geology and physical features such as hills and downland (e.g. possible risk of mudslides into valleys and/or onto access or egress points for evacuation) which can influence one’s assessment of overall risk.  Assessment of flood risk is a well understood example of how this operates in practice but other natural factors can influence health and safety issues.  Environmentally sensitive areas such as SSSIs or Class A rivers which could be affected by an emergency originating from the site – such as pollution incidents or a fire – are also likely to be identified through such research.

Such maps and other sources can also indicate man made hazards e.g. large industrial installations; railway lines and major roads. Offsite hazards (both natural and manmade) can be a factor in risk assessments and evacuation plans.  The point is that site management may not always be aware of what lurks nearby or its significance to health and safety risks.

Topographical and land use information can also inform hazard identification or the rating applied. For example – with a workforce operating outside of site buildings e.g. commercial horticulture or construction – health and safety issues could include unidentified contaminated land, higher than normal risk of landslip, slurry pits, drowning, electrocution from utilities infrastructure, unplanned contact with farm animals or delayed emergency egress due to the physical landscape are just a some diverse examples that might be informed from landscape and land use research.

Risk assessment is a palette of many colours and shades. Understanding the landscape around a site and how previous occupiers – sometimes over many centuries – have utilised it can assist ones perception of all its health, safety and environmental risks.

Why write a blog about risk? Well, risk is very much in the news at the moment. Perhaps it is yet another bank or country saying they are having problems with debt management. Perhaps it is something smaller in the great scheme of things but even more important to the SME concerned.  We all have a different view about what risks we can or will accept. Risk experts call this ‘risk appetite.’

When it comes to Quality Management and Integrated Management Systems we can assist with any research or compliance update needs.

We can advise and assist you with planning your own response or even fully resource these on your behalf.

This can be anything form an hour’s research to a full scale project.

We can also assist with a wide range of business information projects – specialist in-house skills include heritage management and legal research. We can also provide research for a wide range of related purposes including sustainable development, many aspects of risk management as well as reviewing a current consultant’s performance or advice.

One component of risk is consequences. Compliance should focus on preventive actions such as systems improvement and enhanced training. Regulators usually support these initiatives but can also see the world in terms of punishment. The likely risk of punishment is both a consequence and a part of risk appetite, especially when punishments have financial and reputational impact on an organisation.

Risk is seen as negative. The unplanned event; the tragic occurrence; the opportunity cost of devoting time to something you’d rather not and at expense at something you rather would.

Whether you are reading this blog in an office, a coffee shop or a factory, the building you’re sitting in should have a fire risk assessment and that should include fire evacuation strategy or plan. There are many factors to be considered with fire risk assessments and this blog article just touches on one of them – evacuation.

Whether you want to improve your risk management outcomes or identify your levels of compliance or just further enhance your business excellence then please contact us.

Do you have an ISO 9001, ISO 14001 or BS OHSAS 18001 assessment due? Or perhaps you have a customer audit coming up that is based on one or all of these Standards but don’t have the resources to manage it?

Highdown Solutions can do this for you as well as helping you to turn any outstanding corrective actions or other issues into continual improvements.

Our services include gap analysis as well as  practical help and advice prior to the audit or assessment.