Ogre, just to clarify. As I understand it, the Health And Safety At Work Act is written using the "so far as is reasonably practicable" form of words. "As low as reasonably practicable" is the HSE (and safety engineering) preferred translation of the act wording into something a bit more meaningful for engineers. One has not replaced the other.
Additionally the ALARP concept requires that further mitigations are required until the 'cost' is grossly disproportionate to the risk reduction gained. Typically this means that a Court would expect that the cost of further mitigations would be a factor of 3 to 10 times more than the risk reduction (expressed as a cost). Note that the 'cost' might be £s but could just as easily be time or effort expended - its the legal usage of 'cost'.
As you might imagine this use of 'cost' complicates matters for the engineer and the use of £s for fatality is controversial for some people and the Press. A few companies therefore use some form of formal review in the presence of senior engineering staff to explore the whether ALARP can be judged to have been achieved for the hazards with the worst hazard/risk category.
Tuc, its worth saying that while cost is a legitimate consideration for ALARP assessments, affordability is not. The subtlety is sometimes missed.
EAP
Last edited by EAP86; 10th Oct 2016 at 14:50.
Reason: clarification