Assessment form
OxfordRiskCentre
for Staff and
Learning Development
1
Risk Assessment
As part of the planning process, it is wise to come to some judgements about what
factors may get in the way of you achieving your objectives. The issue here is to
assess what few but key things might inhibit your course from being developed or
delivered.
See over for the risk assessment form
The risk assessment process asks for judgements in response to two questions:

What factors could inhibit the successful development and/or delivery of your
course?

What can your team/school/University do to neutralise or minimise these factors?
The first part of the risk assessment form contains three elements:

An assessment of up to five key things that could go wrong (risks).

An assessment of the comparative importance of these factors (impact).

A statement of what will be done to ensure that the riskiest factors do not occur
(controls).
In column 1, list the few, key factors that might inhibit the project successfully completing
its tasks. Enter no more than five factors; normally two or three will suffice. Fo r each
factor, assess in column 2 (using a 1 to 5 scale, low to high) the likelihood of the factor
occurring, and in column 3, (using a 1 to 5 scale) the impact it would have if it occurred. In
column 4, write in the result of multiplying column 2 by colum n 3. In column 5, list those
things which you and those involved in the project can do to neutralise or minimise the
likelihood of the factors occurring.
The second part contains two elements. These seek to answer two further questions:

What few but key factors would help to ensure the successful completion of the
project?

What can be done to maximise the occurrence of these factors?
Some success factors may simply be the obverse of these risks: these can be ignored on
this form, since they have already been assessed. But there may be one or two success
factors that do not exist as risks but which, if proactively managed, could make a
significant contribution to the successful conclusion of the project. For example, the
absence of a specialist resource (eg, access to online full-text journals) may not be a
significant risk, but having it may be a significant asset.
Once the success factors have been identified, the second column can be used to identify
the strategies or actions that you will pursue and which are designed to maximise the
occurrence of the success factors.
Risk assessment is primarily an activity about exercising judgement. The form is designed
to help you think about risks and to record your ideas. This assessment can be used as
one of the bases for reporting progress. Revisiting your risk assessment at frequent
intervals to monitor progress is helpful.
www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd
Risk Assessment form
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Risk Assessment form
Risk assessment form
Risks
Probability/ Impact Ratio
(a)
Probablity
(b)
Impact
(c)
Score [(a) x (b)]
Controls
4
Risk Assessment form
Factors for success
Strategies for maximising these