Risk assessment template

What this is about

German occupational safety law expects employers to assess hazards before work starts, and a film set is work of a particularly improvised kind: electricity near water, rigged loads over walkways, vehicles in shot, weather with opinions. The template walks the schedule activity by activity — what could harm whom, how likely, how severe — and forces a mitigation with a name attached. Its output is not the document itself but the changed day: the cable rerouted, the spotter assigned, the drone slot moved away from the crowd.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• One row per activity and hazard — not per day — because the rigging, the drone flight and the driving shot carry different risks at different hours
• A rating combining likelihood and severity, kept simple enough that the crew uses it instead of admiring it
• Mitigations phrased as actions with a named owner and a deadline, since measures without owners are wishes
• Residual risk stated honestly, plus the link into the set safety briefing where the findings reach the people they protect

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Walk the shooting schedule and list every activity with hazard potential: rigging, electricity, heights, vehicles, water, animals, drones, night work.
2. For each, name who is exposed — crew, cast, bystanders — because the mitigation differs by group.
3. Rate likelihood and severity, and let the rating decide where planning effort concentrates.
4. Define mitigations as concrete actions with owners and check dates, and change the schedule where a hazard is cheaper to avoid than to manage.
5. Carry the day-relevant findings into the safety briefing and keep the assessment on set, where questions arise.
6. Review after incidents or plan changes — a rescheduled scene can move a hazard from noon to dusk and change everything about it.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• A copy-pasted generic assessment that mentions no location, no scene and no name from this production
• Mitigations without owners, which transfer risk to whoever happens to stand closest
• Treating the document as done once written, while the schedule underneath it keeps moving

With TillyGen

TillyGen's plan lists scenes with locations, times and special elements early, so hazard-heavy days — stunts, night exteriors, drone slots — are identified in prep, when mitigation is a planning move.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.