Risk Assessments in the Supply Chain: Where Most Operations Have Gaps
The Health and Safety Executive’s most recent annual figures make uncomfortable reading for anyone running a supply chain operation. In 2024/25, transportation and storage entered the top three sectors for fatal injuries to workers for the first time, with 15 deaths recorded. Risk management needs to become a focus for all supply chains.
Across all industries, workplace transport, falls from height and being struck by moving objects continue to dominate the most serious incidents, and manual handling alone still accounts for around 17% of all reported workplace injuries.
These are not abstract numbers. They map almost exactly onto the daily realities of warehouses, distribution centres, yards and transport operations. The control measure that should be sitting between an operation and these outcomes is the risk assessment. Yet talk to any seasoned operations manager and you’ll hear the same thing: most sites have risk assessments on file. Far fewer have ones that genuinely reflect how the operation runs today.
The “We Have One” Trap
It’s a familiar pattern. A new operations manager joins, asks for the risk assessments, and is handed a folder. The folder is thick. The dates on some of the documents are reassuring. The signatures are present. Box ticked.
The problem is that the folder represents compliance, not control. Risk assessments are working documents. They’re meant to capture how a specific activity actually happens at a specific site, by specific people, with specific equipment, today. Once they’re filed and forgotten, they stop doing the job they exist for.
The HSE is clear that assessments must be reviewed when there are changes in the workplace, when accidents or near misses occur, when staff or processes change, or simply when there’s reason to think the controls are no longer working. In a busy supply chain operation, those triggers are happening constantly. The annual review cycle most sites default to was never going to keep up.
The Risk Assessments Your Operation Should be Re-Reading Right Now
If you’ve inherited a risk assessment library, or you’ve simply not looked at one in a while, these are the areas where supply chain operations most often have gaps between the documented controls and what actually happens on the floor. IoSCM’s broader coverage of common warehouse safety risks is useful background, but the specific assessments worth pulling first are these:
Workplace transport and pedestrian segregation.
The big one for transport and storage. According to figures cited by the British Safety Council and the UK Material Handling Association, around 25% of accidents in the sector involve a forklift, and being struck by a moving vehicle led to over 1,300 non-fatal injuries to employees in the most recent reporting year. The UKMHA’s current campaign message is blunt: a painted line is not enough. Assessments written before a layout change, a new shift pattern, or the arrival of agency staff are the ones most likely to understate the real risk.
Racking and storage.
Damaged uprights, overloaded beams and lapsed inspections are common findings on operational walk-rounds. The assessment should reflect the actual rack configuration in use, the inspection regime in place, and the reporting route for damage. If it still references a layout from two reconfigurations ago, it isn’t doing its job.
Manual handling.
With handling, lifting and carrying still driving close to a fifth of reported workplace injuries, this one deserves more than a generic template. It should be activity-specific, reflect the actual loads being handled, and account for changes in pick rates, shift length, or product mix.
Working at height.
Order pickers, mezzanine work and rooftop access for plant maintenance all sit under the Work at Height Regulations. If the assessment doesn’t name the specific access methods used and the controls in place for each, it’s likely too generic to be useful.
- Lone working. Night shifts, security patrols, drivers between drops, weekend cover at small distribution sites. These assessments often get written once for the obvious roles and never extended to the ones that have crept in over time.
- Driving for work. Any operation that runs vehicles, has staff travelling between sites, or relies on grey fleet has a duty of care under HSE guidance. This assessment is the one most often missing entirely. It shouldn’t be.
Where Document and Reality Drift Apart
Even where the risk assessments exist and look thorough on paper, the gap between the document and the operation is where most of the real risk lives. A change in shift pattern that puts more vehicle movements into a shorter window. A new line of stock that needs different materials handling equipment. An agency intake that hasn’t had the same induction as permanent staff. A near miss that was reported, discussed in the toolbox talk, and never made it back into the assessment itself. The tone set by site leadership is what determines whether issues like these get caught or quietly accumulate.
This is where it pays to take an existing risk assessment and physically walk the activity it covers. Talk to the people doing the work, and compare what’s written to what you see. A risk assessment is, in practice, always in draft: it only stays useful if it’s tested against the operation regularly and updated when reality has moved on. Health and safety consultancy Universal Safety Practitioners sets out exactly that approach in its briefing on the standard five-step risk assessment process. For sites that haven’t done that walk in twelve months or more, it’s almost guaranteed that something has drifted.
The same point applies to the controls themselves. A control measure that’s documented but not enforced, not understood, or not practical for the people doing the work is no control at all. It’s a paper defence that doesn’t survive contact with operational pressure.
Ownership: The Operations Question, not the H&S Question
One of the more persistent misconceptions in supply chain operations is that risk assessments belong to the health and safety function, when in reality they belong to the operation. Health and safety colleagues, where they exist, bring methodology, regulatory awareness, and challenge. They cannot, and should not, be the ones who know how every activity on a site actually runs day to day. That knowledge sits with supervisors, team leaders, drivers, pickers and operators, and the risk assessment process needs to capture it.
IoSCM’s guidance on workplace safety best practices for leaders sets out how that tone is established from the top, and for operations leaders it carries a practical implication. Risk assessments are part of how you run the site. They sit alongside the SOPs, the KPIs, and the toolbox talks as core operational documents, not as compliance paperwork that lives in a separate folder. When ownership is clear, the review cycle tends to look after itself. When it isn’t, the folder gets thicker and the gap between document and reality gets wider.
A Practical Re-Review
For operations leaders looking at their risk assessment library this quarter, a useful starting point is to pick the five activities with the highest realistic potential for serious harm on your site, pull the relevant assessments, and walk each one against the actual activity. Note where the document and the operation no longer match, where controls are documented but not enforced and where the people doing the work weren’t part of the last review.
That exercise alone tends to surface more useful information than a full annual review cycle conducted from a desk. The HSE figures for 2024/25 are a reminder that the cost of getting this wrong, particularly in transport and storage, is going up. The risk assessments are already on file. The job now is to make sure they’re still doing what they’re meant to do.
Manage risk in your supply chain with qualified, knowledgeable and confident teams and leaders. IoSCM can equip your team with the skills and capability needed to drive success. Find out which courses best suit your needs by speaking with an expert course advisor today. Call 0800 1422 522 or complete the contact form here.