Occupational Risk Assessment (ORZ) on Site

The occupational risk assessment - ORZ (occupational risk assessment) for short - is the paper every OSH (occupational safety and health) inspection on a construction site starts with. Not the instructions, not the training. First the inspector asks about the ORZ. And if you don't have one, or it's done half-heartedly, you have a problem. In this post I'll show you in plain terms what it is, how it's done and where site bosses most often trip up. And if you'd rather not bash it out from scratch - the BudoReady STARTER package gives you ready-made ORZ templates for 5 jobs, to fill in the firm's name and a signature.

Key points in brief

• The ORZ is the foundation of all OSH documentation - everything starts from it, and the PIP inspector (the Polish Labour Inspectorate) asks about it first.
• You must have a separate assessment for EACH job - painter, tiler, plumber, electrician, plasterer are five different documents.
• The most popular method on site is the Risk Score under PN-N-18002: probability × exposure × consequences.
• An ORZ without the worker's signature and a date of familiarisation is, to the inspector, a worthless paper.
• Legal basis: Art. 226 of the Labour Code. From 8 July 2026 PIP inspections will be tougher - worth having this sorted out beforehand.

What exactly is this Occupational Risk Assessment

Let's leave the textbook definitions aside. In plain terms: the ORZ is a written answer to the question "what could harm my worker at this specific job and what am I doing about it so it doesn't happen". That's it. You take a job, list the hazards, assess how dangerous they are, and next to each you write how you protect against it.

This isn't a formality for the paperwork. It's the foundation. Everything else flows from the ORZ - which job-specific OSH instructions you need, what protective equipment to buy, what to train people on. If you don't have an ORZ, the rest of the documentation hangs in the air, because there's no basis on which it was built.

Where the obligation comes from

I didn't make this up. It's set out in Art. 226 of the Labour Code - the employer assesses and documents occupational risk and informs workers about it. The details of how to do it are in the Regulation of the Minister of Labour and Social Policy of 26 September 1997 on general OSH rules. And for us, in construction work, there's also the Regulation of the Minister of Infrastructure of 6 February 2003 on OSH in the performance of construction work. These are the three pillars and nothing else needs citing.

And one important thing: this obligation applies to you even if you employ one person. There's no threshold of "from five workers" or "from ten". Have even one on a contract - and you have the obligation to assess and document the risk at their job. A micro firm is no excuse; to the inspector the same counts as for a large contractor.

Why each job separately - and that's final

This is mistake number one and the reason inspectors reject the most assessments. The site boss pulls one ORZ off the internet, writes "construction worker" on it and thinks he's covered the whole firm. He hasn't.

Because a painter, tiler, plumber, electrician and plasterer do completely different things and completely different things threaten them:

• Painter - solvent fumes, work on a ladder, sanding dust.
• Tiler - silica dust from cutting tiles, kneeling and the spine, sharp edges, water and electricity close together.
• Plumber - a torch and fire, hot pipes, confined spaces, sometimes gas.
• Electrician - electric shock, arc flash, live working.
• Plasterer - a pressurised unit, dust, strain on the arms and shoulders, scaffolding.

See the difference? One paper for everyone won't cover it. For each of these jobs you need a separate ORZ. Five jobs = five documents. The inspector checks this first, and if they see one generic paper for everything - they reject it and write an order.

How it's calculated - the Risk Score method under PN-N-18002

On construction sites the most commonly used is the Risk Score method based on the PN-N-18002 standard. It's simple and logical, which is why it caught on. You multiply three things:

R = P × E × S

• P - probability that the event will happen at all (from "almost impossible" to "practically certain").
• E - exposure, i.e. how often the worker is exposed (once a year or every day for 8 hours).
• S - consequences, i.e. how serious the harm would be (from a minor cut to death).

To each of these three things you assign a number from a table, multiply them together and get a result. That result tells you how great the risk is and whether you have to do something about it. The logic is common sense: something that happens rarely and gives a minor scratch comes out with a small result. Something that threatens daily and could end in disability or death - shoots up high and shouts that you need to act. That's why this method caught on on construction sites: you don't need to be an engineer to grasp it, and the result is tangible.

Risk levels - a simplified scale

Result R	Risk level	What you do
below 20	negligible / low	accept, monitor
20-70	medium	plan improvement, implement measures
70-200	high	implement measures urgently
above 200	very high	work suspended until secured

The point is this: first you calculate the risk without safeguards, then you add the protective measures and show that thanks to them the risk dropped to an acceptable level. It's precisely that second column - the measures - that matters most to the inspector.

What a correct ORZ must contain

For the assessment to hold up at an inspection, it must have several things. Missing any of them is a reason for rejection:

1. The job title - specific, not "construction worker", but "tiler", "electrician".
2. Identification of hazards - what really threatens at this job, point by point.
3. Risk assessment - the P, E, S values and the result for each hazard.
4. Protective measures - what you do to reduce the risk (technical, organisational, personal protection).
5. The date of preparation and who carried out the assessment.
6. The worker's signature with the date of familiarisation - proof that the worker knows what they're exposed to.

That last point is what site bosses most often skip. The ORZ sits in a binder, but nobody showed it to the worker and nobody signed. To the inspector such a document practically doesn't exist, because you failed the obligation under Art. 226 of the Labour Code - namely informing the worker about the risk.

Example - one risk entry for a tiler

So you can see what it looks like in practice, here's how a single hazard is written out. We take a tiler and dry-cutting tiles - a classic that dusts up the whole site.

Hazard	P	E	S	R = P×E×S	Level	Protective measures
Silica dust when dry-cutting tiles (risk of respiratory disease)	3	6	7	126	high	Wet cutting or with dust extraction, FFP3 half-mask, room ventilation, breaks

And you do the same with every further hazard for this job: kneeling and the spine, electric shock from tools near water, cuts from sharp edges. One job is usually 6-10 such entries. Multiply by five jobs and you can see how much of this work there is if you start from scratch.

Note one thing in this example: a result of 126 is high risk, so you can't leave it as it is. Only after entering the measures - wet cutting, an FFP3 mask, extraction - does the risk really drop. And it's exactly this "before and after" change that the inspector wants to see on paper. It's not enough to enter a high result; you have to show that you know how to bring it down and what specifically you do on site to that end.

The most common mistakes that make an inspector reject an ORZ

Most assessments fail over the same four things. Remember them and you'll avoid an order:

1. A generic one pulled off the internet

Inspectors know these off-the-shelf ones by heart. If your assessment is "construction worker" copied word for word from the first Google link, with no reference to your actual work - it goes in the bin. The assessment has to fit what you really do on site.

2. One job instead of each

I wrote it above and I'll repeat it, because it's the most common sin. Five different tradesmen, one paper - won't pass. Each job separately.

3. No worker's signature

An assessment without a signature and a date of familiarisation is, to the inspector, a document the worker never saw. And since they didn't see it, they weren't informed of the risk - meaning you breached Art. 226 of the Labour Code.

4. No updating

An ORZ isn't a paper for all time. You change technology, buy new equipment, move onto a different type of site, an accident happens - you update the assessment. A document from five years ago on which nothing has changed even though the firm has, also raises questions.

5. Protective measures detached from the hazards

Sometimes the assessment is seemingly complete, but in the measures column someone has pasted the same thing for everything: "gloves, helmet, training". The inspector looks and sees that for a painter's solvent fumes there's not a word about a mask or ventilation. The measure has to match the specific hazard - otherwise it's obvious someone was bashing it out just to fill the table.

On what exactly is coming in inspections, I wrote more when covering the PIP reform 2026 - worth a look, because from 8 July 2026 inspectors get stronger tools.

How to sort this out without slaving away at night - the STARTER package

You can write all of this yourself. Five jobs, a dozen or so entries each, tables, calculations, spaces for signatures. Realistically it's several evenings' work if you want it done properly and holding up at an inspection.

Or you take a ready-made one. The BudoReady STARTER package for 299 zł gives you 10 files, and its core is precisely ready-made occupational risk assessments for 5 construction jobs - written using the Risk Score method, with values, measures and spaces for signatures. On top of that, job-specific instructions, registers and a PIP inspection checklist. You open it, enter the firm's name, print it, hand it to the people to sign. Done.

The STARTER package is the minimum every micro construction firm (PKD 43) should have in the binder before the inspector knocks. The promotional price applies until 7 July 2026 - right before the tougher inspections take effect.

See BudoReady packages

This article is for information only and does not replace advice from an OSH specialist or an individual analysis of the legal state. Document templates require individual adaptation to the realities of your firm and specific jobs, and the current legal state is worth verifying as at the date of use.