Cheers Matt, valid question.
To gauge whether the risk is minimised to an acceptable level/ to measure the 'residual risk' there a few measures I use......I kind of do this 'naturally', but now that you ask me to write this down I think I should have this documented as an actual procedure/process I follow, that will be a useful tool to communicate my approach to others....thanks for helping me realise that Matt.
1. I use my experience and the experience within the organisation to assess whether I/we think its safe enough/the risk is low enough. Which is exactly what we do when we use a matrix, but instead of getting caught up on if its 1:1000 or 1:10,000, or yellow or orange.....its simply "does that, in my experience ,seem to provide an appropriate level of safety?
1.b we will have a discussion to answer the question "are we taking all reasonably practicable here to keep the staff and clients safe during this adventure activity?" if not, what more could we be doing.
2. I use guidance material from the industry or Worksafe or internationally to measure what we propose. I read up and see if what I propose is still accepted within the industry, or perhaps its outdated and the gear or systems have be upgraded/changed/moved on.
3. I look to other operators in the industry and see if what I/we are proposing is common practice, or am I bing a renegade/cowboy.
4. If I want more info I will run it past other technical experts that I know in the field, i'll ask them, "what do you think about this?" "should we be doing more?"
So yea, I have a good amount of experience in running adventure activities, but I'm new to the "safety-science" side of things........thats the process of risk management that comes natural to me.
Again, I'm here to learn, so anyone feel free to give feedback.
Cheers
Riki