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3.2 Formal Safety Assessment Process

The IMO FSA process (IMO, 2018) as approved by the IMO in 2018 under Maritime Safety Committee – Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC).2/circ. 12/Rev.2 will be applied to the risk assessment within this NRA, and informs volume 2, chapter 13.
The FSA process is a structured and systematic methodology based upon risk analysis and Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) (if applicable) to reduce hazards to As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP). There are five basic steps within this process as illustrated by Figure 3.1 and summarised in the following list:

Step 1 – Identification of hazards (a list is produced of hazards prioritised by risk level specific to the problem under review).
Step 2 – Risk assessment (investigation of the causes and initiating events and risks of the more important hazards identified in step 1).
Step 3 – Risk control options (identification of measures to control and reduce the identified risks).
Step 4 – CBA (identification and comparison of the benefits and costs associated with the risk control options identified in step 3).
Step 5 – Recommendations for decision-making (defining of recommendations based upon the outputs of steps 1 to 4).

A diagram of steps to risk control

Description automatically generated

It is noted that hazards of a commercial nature are considered outside the remit of the NRA but have been assessed using the FSA process in volume 2, chapter 13 where appropriate.

3.2.1 Hazard Workshop Methodology

A key tool used in the NRA process is the Hazard Workshop which ensures that all hazards are identified, and the corresponding risks qualified in discussion with relevant consultees (for further details including attendance at the Hazard Workshop see Section 4.3). Table 3.1 and Table 3.2 define the severity of consequence and the frequency of occurrence rankings that have been used to assess risks within the Hazard Log, completed based on the outputs of the Hazard Workshop for the Array (held 31 August 2023). The use of severity of consequence and the frequency of occurrence is as per the IMO FSA process (IMO, 2018).

Rank	Description	Definition
Rank	Description	People	Property	Environment	Business
1	Negligible	No perceptible impact	No perceptible impact	No perceptible impact	No perceptible impact
2	Minor	Slight injury(s)	Minor damage to property i.e. superficial damage	Tier 1 local assistance required	Minor reputational risks – limited to users
3	Moderate	Multiple minor or single serious injury	Damage not critical to operations	Tier 2 limited external assistance required	Local reputational risks
4	Serious	Multiple serious injuries or single fatality	Damage resulting in critical impact on operations	Tier 2 regional assistance required	National reputational risks
5	Major	More than one fatality	Total loss of property	Tier 3 national assistance required	International reputational risks

The severity of consequence and frequency of occurrence are then used to define the significance of risk via a tolerability matrix approach as shown in Table 3.3. The significance of risk is defined as Broadly Acceptable (low risk), Tolerable (intermediate risk) or Unacceptable (high risk).

	Unacceptable (high risk)
	Tolerable (intermediate risk)
	Broadly Acceptable (low risk)

Once identified, the significance of risk will be assessed to ensure it is ALARP. Further risk control measures may be required to further mitigate a hazard in accordance with the ALARP principles. Unacceptable risks are not considered to be ALARP.