Risk Assessments

Every score falls in a band of the matrix, and each band carries a name, a color and an action: accept, monitor, reduce within a set time, must not start, or prohibited. The standard matrix has five bands, Low, Moderate, High, Critical and Catastrophic, and your own matrices set theirs.

Bands drive the workflow. While any hazard's residual risk sits in a band that does not allow the work to start, the assessment cannot be sent for approval or completed, and the crew add controls until it can. A band can also carry its own approval rule, naming the ranks that approve and whether one or all of them must.

The standard scale provides enough granularity to distinguish between risks that need watching and risks that need immediate intervention, without overwhelming assessors with unnecessary complexity.

Every hazard is rated twice on the risk matrix: its initial risk as it stands, and its residual risk once its controls are in place. On board, the crew mark each control that is in place for this job, add any more it needs, and pick the residual risk for every hazard.

The highest residual risk becomes the assessment's worst residual risk, shown with its score and band in every list. It is worked out again each time a hazard is saved, so the office sees at a glance which jobs carry the most risk across the fleet.

Assign assessment responsibility and approval authority based on 51 recognized on-board ranks. Each risk assessment definition specifies which ranks are responsible for conducting the assessment and which ranks have approval authority, ensuring that the right crew members perform and verify each assessment.

Each definition also sets whether its assessments need no approval, one approver, or an officer of every approver rank. When the worst residual risk falls in a band with its own approval rule, that rule decides instead, so a higher risk can call for more senior approvers.

Rank-based assignment scales across your fleet: define the assessment once with rank requirements, and every vessel's crew structure automatically determines who conducts and who approves. The system adapts to crew changes without requiring individual name assignments, reducing administrative overhead while maintaining accountability.

When the crew repeat a job that already has a completed risk assessment, they reconfirm it instead of starting a new one. A responsible officer reads its hazards and controls again and records whether the job's conditions are unchanged or changed, with a note.

Unchanged, the assessment stays completed. Changed, it goes back to ongoing with its approval cleared, so the hazards are revised and approved again. Every reconfirmation stays on the assessment with its date, who made it, its outcome and the note.

Identify and classify every operational hazard with precision. Navatom supports three distinct hazard types — Environmental, Property, and Health — ensuring that every risk is categorized by its impact domain.

Each hazard captures structured data including controls, consequences, and tolerance scoring, creating a complete risk profile that goes far beyond simple text descriptions.

Each hazard also names its source: physical, chemical, biological, ergonomic or psychosocial. Hazards are active or deprecated: deprecated ones remain in the historical record and can be reopened, and an active hazard that belongs to no definition can be added to one. As operations change and new risks emerge, the classification system ensures your hazard register stays current and meaningful.

Document and track control measures for every identified hazard. The definition lists each hazard's controls, and on board the crew mark each one that is in place for this job as complete, with a remark where it helps.

Additional controls can be added on demand during the assessment, each with an owner and a due date, as new mitigation strategies are identified or operational conditions change.

The control management system ensures that risk assessments are not just identification exercises but active mitigation plans. Track which controls are in place and which are still pending, and rate the residual risk with them in place. The structured approach transforms hazard identification into actionable risk reduction.

Every risk assessment follows a controlled five-stage lifecycle: Ongoing, Awaiting Approval, Rejected, Completed, and Deleted. The lifecycle enforces data integrity at each transition: an assessment cannot be sent for approval or completed until every hazard has a residual risk and none falls in a band that stops the work, and a Completed assessment locks its data against further modification.

The Awaiting Approval stage introduces a formal review gate where designated approvers verify that the assessment was conducted properly, all hazards were evaluated, and control measures are adequate. Rejected assessments return to the responsible officers with the approver's reason for correction, creating a quality loop that ensures assessment rigor. An assessment that needs no approval is completed directly.

Record everyone who takes part in a job's risk assessment, on board or from outside the vessel: the person in charge, assessors, the work party and advisers. Each comes from the crew, the company's office staff, a contractor, class or a surveyor, the port or terminal, or elsewhere.

No one approves an assessment they assessed alone. When the approver rated every hazard and no one else took part as an assessor, the approval is refused until another crew member or office employee joins as an assessor.

Vessel crews conduct risk assessments directly on board in the ship app. The assessment workflow guides crew members through hazard rating, control documentation, participants and form completion, and the office follows every vessel's assessments on the company app.

Crew members work with the same risk matrices, hazard classifications, and control templates as shore-based safety managers, and every assessment is started, rated, approved and reconfirmed on board.

Link risk assessments directly to your SMS manual procedures. Each definition can name the procedure in the Manuals module that describes how the job is done, and list the manual sections the job refers to, creating a living connection between your safety management system documentation and the risks associated with each operational activity.

The procedure shows on every assessment started from the definition, so the crew rating the hazards can read how the job is done, and the printed assessment names it.

Procedure links ensure that risk assessments are not standalone documents but integral parts of your safety management system.

Embed digital checklists and structured forms directly within risk assessments using the Forms module integration. Assessment forms capture standardized data — safety equipment checks, environmental condition surveys, crew competency verifications — as part of the assessment workflow rather than as separate documents.

Forms integration means that risk assessments can include any structured data collection your SMS requires. Attach a form to a definition, such as an enclosed space entry checklist, and every assessment started from it carries that form to fill in. Each save of the form is recorded in the assessment's events for full traceability.

Classify each risk assessment by how familiar the job is: routine, non-routine, or infrequent or first time. Task nature helps safety managers allocate assessment time and identify assessments that may need additional training or supervision.

Task nature is set on the assessment definition, not the individual hazards. A cargo tank cleaning assessment marked first time signals to the planning team that it requires experienced assessors and adequate time allocation. Definitions can also name the kinds of machinery a job covers rather than one vessel's equipment. This operational intelligence improves assessment quality by ensuring adequate preparation.

Document the potential consequences of every identified hazard with structured consequence records. Each consequence names what could happen if the hazard materializes without adequate controls and describes it, while the hazard itself carries the affected domain (Environmental, Property, Health) and its severity on the matrix.

Structured consequence documentation transforms risk assessments from abstract scoring exercises into concrete safety narratives. When crew members can see exactly what a "Major" severity rating means in terms of real consequences — oil spill volume, injury potential, equipment damage scope — the risk assessment becomes a more effective safety communication tool.

Follow every vessel's risk assessments from the office. The company app lists the ongoing ones, including those awaiting approval or rejected, and the closed ones, each with its ship, who started it, when, and its worst residual risk with its band.

Sort, filter and group the lists to give safety managers and DPAs immediate visibility: which vessels have assessments waiting, where the highest residual risks sit, and which jobs were completed when.

Open any assessment for its hazards, participants and events, or print it to PDF with every hazard's ratings and controls. The module's dashboard holds your own dashboards, with the widgets you choose from the rest of Navatom.

Every action on a risk assessment is recorded as it happens, with who did it and when: hazard ratings, participants, form saves, sending, approvals, rejections and reconfirmations. Definitions and templates record every hazard, assignment, version and matrix change the same way, and each hazard every control, consequence and rating change.

The audit trail is an accountability system, not just a log. Every event carries full user attribution, timestamp, and contextual data.

ISM auditors, port state inspectors, and classification society surveyors can reconstruct exactly what happened during any risk assessment, who made each decision, and when.

Discuss each hazard where it is defined. Every hazard of a definition or template has its own comments, on the ship app and the company app alike, beside its controls, consequences and event history.

Per-hazard commenting enables collaborative risk assessment development. Safety officers can add notes about specific hazards, crew members can share field observations, and shore-based managers can provide guidance, so the reasoning behind each rating stays with the hazard for the next assessment and the next audit.