Risk Assessment Template

What is a risk assessment?

A risk assessment is a structured document that identifies potential threats to a project, process, or operation, evaluates each threat by likelihood and impact, and defines the actions required to reduce or eliminate the risk. It creates a shared, auditable record of how an organisation manages uncertainty.

Risk assessments move risk management from informal conversations to documented evidence. In construction, engineering, finance, and regulated industries, they are often mandatory — required by ISO 31000, health and safety legislation, or contractual obligations. Without a standardised template, risk registers vary by team and critical threats go unrecorded. A consistent format ensures every risk is captured, scored, and assigned to an owner who tracks it to closure.

Who should use this template?

This template is for teams responsible for managing operational and project risk:

• Project Managers — identify and track risks throughout the project lifecycle so issues are anticipated rather than reactive
• Operations Managers — assess process risks across sites and embed mitigations into standard procedures
• Health and Safety Officers — document workplace hazards, evaluate severity, and ensure corrective actions are completed
• Compliance Managers — maintain auditable risk records that satisfy ISO, regulatory, and contractual requirements

What’s included in this template?

The template has two parts: structured metadata fields and the risk assessment body.

Metadata fields classify each assessment:

• Assessment title and reference number (e.g. RA-PRJ-042)
• Department or project
• Risk owner — the person accountable for the overall assessment
• Assessment date and next review date
• Status (draft, active, closed)

Assessment body documents each risk:

• Context — what is being assessed and which standards or regulations apply
• Risk register — table with risk description, category, likelihood score, impact score, risk rating, mitigation action, owner, and target date
• Risk matrix — visual mapping of likelihood versus impact to prioritise treatment
• Treatment plan — detailed actions for high-priority risks with responsible owner, deadline, and progress status
• Review log — dated entries recording reassessments and changes to risk ratings

How to create and customise this template in Elium

1. Open the Template Builder — Go to your profile menu and select the Template Builder tab, or click “+ Create” and choose “Create a new template”.
2. Set the scope — Choose an icon, enable the template, and decide whether it applies platform-wide or to specific spaces (e.g. Risk Management or Project Management).
3. Add structured fields — Click “Field” to add metadata: text fields for assessment title and reference number, a tag field for department or project, a user field for risk owner, date fields for assessment date and next review, and a tag field for status (pre-populate with “Draft”, “Active”, “Closed”). Mark risk owner and status as mandatory.
4. Build the assessment structure — Use the “+” button to add content blocks: a text block for context, a table block for the risk register (columns: #, risk, category, likelihood, impact, rating, mitigation, owner, target date), a text block for the treatment plan, and a text block for the review log.
5. Preview and save — Review the template layout, then save. Project and operations teams can now select it when creating new risk assessments, and you can apply it to existing content in bulk.

How AI helps you create and use this template

Capture faster. Paste meeting notes, incident reports, or audit findings into Elium’s AI. It identifies potential risks, suggests likelihood and impact scores, and generates a structured first draft that your risk owner refines.

Retrieve smarter. A project manager asks Elium’s AI: “What risks did we identify on the Lyon metro extension project?” The AI returns the specific risk register entries, mitigation actions, and current status — so lessons from past projects inform new ones.

Why teams use Elium for risk management

Risk assessments are living documents — they must be updated as conditions change and accessible to everyone involved in mitigation. When risk registers live in spreadsheets attached to emails, they go stale within weeks. Elium keeps risk knowledge current: structured templates enforce consistent scoring, version control tracks every change, and search lets anyone retrieve past assessments instantly.

Bouygues Construction — 53,500 employees across 80 countries — uses Elium to centralise project and operational knowledge. Risk assessments, quality records, and best practices live in a single searchable platform, ensuring lessons from one project are available to every team across the organisation.