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Manage critical risks

How to flag a hazard as a critical risk, choose its critical controls, set a review date and record control verifications on the Critical Hazards page.

Published on
October 5, 2026
Prerequisites
Build your site hazard and risk register
How to add hazards to a site's Hazard & Risk Register in the Portal, rate them on your risk matrix, attach controls and keep the register reviewed.
Use the controls library
How to set up your Controls Library once, attach controls to hazards on site and company registers, and what changes when you edit a control.
Next Steps
Read your risk profile report
How to open the Risk Profile report, set its reporting window and high-risk threshold, read each section, and print it for a board pack.
Raise and track corrective actions
How to raise a corrective action from an incident, an audit or the Actions page, give it an owner, and take it through to Verified or Resolved.

Overview

A critical risk is a hazard you flag for closer management. Once it's flagged, its critical controls are verified on a schedule, and it shows on the Critical Hazards page with the critical risks from all your sites.

Steps

  1. Flag the hazard
    • Open the hazard on the site's Hazard & Risk Register. On Identify, set Is this a Critical Risk? to Yes and save the hazard.
    • Reopen the hazard. It now has Critical risk and Consultation stages.
  2. Choose the critical controls
    • On Controls, keep Critical ticked on each control that needs verifying.
    • The next check date for each control comes from its Inspect every (days) setting in the Controls Library.
  3. Record who was consulted
    • On Consultation, enter the Consultation date, Workers consulted and Consultation notes, then save.
  4. Open Critical Hazards
    • Go to Risk Management → Critical Hazards. The scorecards count critical risks, critical controls, overdue verifications and controls never verified.
    • Under Coverage by site, click Open register to go to a site's critical hazards.
  5. Set the review date
    • In the Critical hazards list, click a hazard to expand it. Enter the Next Review Date and click Save date.
    • To repeat the review every year, click Schedule as recurring annual review. This adds it to the site's Scheduled Works.
  6. Record a verification
    • In the expanded hazard, click Record verification on a control.
    • Choose Pass or Fail, check Verified on and Next due, add any notes and click Save verification.

Troubleshooting

  • The Critical risk stage says "No verification cadence to set" → The hazard isn't flagged yet. Click Go to Identify, set Is this a Critical Risk? to Yes and save.
  • There's no Critical risk stage → Save the hazard first. If you're editing it in the Company Risk Register, open it from a site's register instead.
  • Schedule as recurring annual review is greyed out → Enter a Next Review Date and click Save date first. The button stays greyed out while there are unsaved changes.
  • There are no controls to verify → Critical controls come from the Controls Library, which is part of the full Risk Management suite. Contact Forsite support if your company doesn't have it.

FAQs

What happens when a verification fails?
Forsite raises a corrective action named after the failed control, due in 7 days. You'll find it with the hazard's corrective actions and under Actions.

Where do overdue verifications show up?
On the Critical Hazards page, and on the site's register, where the hazard shows a Controls overdue flag and appears in the Overdue controls queue.

Can a Company Risk Register hazard be a critical risk?
Yes. Set Is this a Critical Risk? on the company hazard. The review date and verifications are kept per site, so manage them from the site's register. Saving the hazard there creates a local copy for that site.

Who decides which hazards are critical?
Your company does. Forsite records the flag and tracks the controls and reviews. It doesn't classify hazards for you.