Each risk assessment in Risk Manager → Risk Assessments belongs to one yacht and assesses one activity on board. A risk assessment is prepared as a draft revision through a four-step wizard (Setup, Hazards, Control measures, Sign off) and comes into force once signed with the assessor's password.
Starting or duplicating a risk assessment
- Open Risk Manager → Risk Assessments and click New risk assessment.
- Nauticare assigns the next default reference number on the vessel (such as
RA-001,RA-002) and opens the draft in the four-step editor.
- Nauticare assigns the next default reference number on the vessel (such as
- To base a new assessment on an existing signed one instead, open that risk assessment and click Duplicate.
- Duplicating copies the active revision's activity, review interval, hazards, ratings and control measures into a new draft with the next available reference number and today's date as the Assessment date.
While editing a draft, use Save as draft at any time or step between tabs using Continue and Back (switching steps saves your changes automatically). Click Discard draft to delete the draft; if the risk assessment has never been signed, discarding its first draft deletes the risk assessment entry altogether.
Step 1 — Setup
On the Setup step, fill in the header details:
- Number — a unique reference on this vessel (up to 20 characters, for example
RA-001). - Activity — the task or operation assessed (up to 500 characters, for example
Working aloft). You can select an entry from the company's Activities list or type your own wording. - Assessment date — the date the assessment was carried out on board. It cannot be in the future.
- Review interval (months) — how often the vessel must review the assessment, from 1 to 60 months (12 months by default). The helper text shows when the first periodic review will fall due.
Step 2 — Hazards and the COSWP risk matrix
On the Hazards step, click Add hazard (up to 50 hazards per risk assessment):
- In Hazard, pick a hazard from the company's Hazards list or type your own description (up to 500 characters).
- Under INITIAL RISK, rate the hazard before any control measure by selecting its Likelihood and Severity, or click Show risk matrix and click a cell directly in the matrix.
- Click Add hazard (or Save hazard when editing an existing row).
Nauticare uses the fixed 4×3 MCA Code of Safe Working Practices (COSWP) risk matrix:
| Likelihood \ Severity | Slight harm (Minor injury, first aid only) | Moderate harm (Medical treatment or time off work) | Extreme harm (Fatality, major injury or permanent disability) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very unlikely | Very low | Very low | High |
| Unlikely | Very low | Medium | Very high |
| Likely | Low | High | Very high |
| Very likely | Low | Very high | Very high |
Step 3 — Control measures and residual risk
On the Control measures step, each hazard is listed with its INITIAL RISK:
- Click Add control measure to add up to 20 measures per hazard. Select an item from the company's Control measures list or enter your own text (up to 500 characters; duplicate measures on the same hazard are not allowed).
- Once a hazard has at least one control measure, rate its RESIDUAL RISK — the risk remaining with those measures in place.
- If a hazard has no control measures, its residual risk stays equal to its initial risk.
- A hazard whose initial risk is High or Very high must have at least one control measure.
- The residual risk band cannot be higher than the initial risk band.
- At the bottom of the step, Overall risk shows the highest residual risk band across all hazards in the assessment.
Step 4 — Sign off and PDF export
The Sign off step shows the full read-only summary of the assessment and checks whether it is ready to sign:
- Not ready to sign (red card) blocks signing if any required field is missing, the assessment date is in the future, there are no hazards, a hazard has no initial rating, a High or Very high initial hazard has no control measures, a residual risk exceeds its initial risk, or any hazard has a Very high residual risk (which can never be signed). Each group of issues has a Go to Setup, Go to Hazards or Go to Control measures link.
- Residual risk is High (yellow warning) notes any hazards whose residual risk remains High after control measures. Signing is allowed, provided the measures are in place and supervised before work starts.
- Check the assessment date (yellow warning) appears if the draft's Assessment date is more than 7 days in the past, reminding you to update it on Setup if the assessment was carried out more recently.
To bring the assessment into force, click Sign, enter your account password in Sign risk assessment, and confirm. Your name, rank and timestamp are recorded under Undertaken by, the revision becomes Active, and the periodic review schedule starts from the assessment date.
You can click Download PDF on the detail page (for the active revision or any revision selected from Revision history) or inside the draft editor to download a formatted PDF (<Number>-rev<N>.pdf).