How to Complete your NEBOSH GNC2/GIC2 Risk Assessment Practical (2025 Syllabus)

With the introduction of the new GNC syllabus comes a new scoring system for the practical risk assessment.

There are now 100 marks available and in order to pass you must gain 60 marks or higher (60%). If you get 59 marks or less you will receive a refer and you will have to make amendments to your existing GNC2/GIC2 based on the examiner’s feedback, changing or adding information where no or few marks were awarded and resubmit.  

So let me guide you through the assessment to try and gain marks to pass for the first time. You should conduct your risk assessment on an area or process within your workplace. If you are unable to use your own workplace or do not currently have a workplace, then the workplace of a family member, friend or even a public facility such as a supermarket or leisure centre could be used as long as you receive permission from the employer.

Next you need to download the blank risk assessment template from the National General Certificate or International General Certificate resources section on the NEBOSH website. You’ll also find the guidance note in the same section which gives all the information you need to complete the assessment, indicates how many marks can be awarded in each part and an example of the level of information to be included to achieve those marks. 

As a general rule for each mark available there should be a separate piece of information provided and don’t leave any of the boxes in the template blank!

Section 1

Onto the assessment. Throughout the blank risk assessment template, you’ll notice there is a wordcount for each section to guide you on how much information to include. There are also prompts for you to follow and an indication of the number of marks available within the green sections of the form to guide you. 

The first section is all setting the scene for the examiner so they get a good understanding of your workplace. You can anonymise your workplace for confidentiality reasons if you wish. You should give a brief description of your workplace and its activities, products and services along with the shift patterns worked. You should also include how many workers there are in the organisation and their typical roles. Then you need to give a description of about a paragraph of the process or area on which your risk assessment will be based upon. 

The next part in the section is to outline the methodology you used to complete your risk assessment. This part can be done at the end of the process. You need to discuss the sources of information you used to help you to complete the risk assessment. This could be from internal information such as policies and procedures and external information such as ACOPs, guidance notes, legislation or industry standards. You also need to include who you spoke to within the workplace to help you to complete your risk assessment. This could be the Facilities Manager and a Shift Supervisor for example. You then need to discuss how you identified hazards. This could be by conducting a workplace inspection or audit for example.

Section 2

The next section is the main body of your risk assessment. Start with the date of the risk assessment. The guidance requires you to identify 10 hazards from at least five different hazard categories. You must use the hazard categories highlighted in the guidance note that are covered in the syllabus. A brief hazard description should be given under each hazard category.

You then must identify which groups of people, workers, contractors or members of the public, for example, could be harmed by each hazard and how they could be harmed. It’s important to give a brief description of how they could be harmed and stipulate the type of injury or illness that could occur. 

Next, it’s recording the current controls that are in place for each of the hazards identified and suggesting any further action. These two work in tandem. Usually if you have lots of controls in place there will be fewer additional controls to suggest and vice versa.

For each additional action you identify, you need to suggest a responsible person to ensure the action is carried out along with when the action is needed by. This should be either immediate, medium term or long term. You must give a realistic amount of time for each action to be completed by. If you feel that some of your current controls are adequately controlled then you can state this in the further controls section but also include a timeframe whereby you would review the effectiveness of the existing control. 

Section 3

The next section is about identifying a hazard to prioritise and to explain your choice. It is a good idea to copy the hazard you choose from section 2 into the first part of section 3 so there’s no confusion. You should then discuss legal reasons for prioritising the hazard. This should include mentioning the legislation specific to the hazard. For GNC2, this should be UK legislation or ILO for GIC2 (any legislation referenced should also be mentioned in the sources of information you used in section 1). Then go on to give moral reasons for the hazard choice and the specific financial and/or business reasons which can include direct and indirect costs. 

Next, you need to give general reasons for prioritising the hazard. This should include arguments on the effectiveness of the current controls, the justification of the likelihood and severity of risk and justification of the suggested further action. 

For the last part of this section, you need to discuss how you could further reduce the risk by either reducing the likelihood or the severity or both. Then you need to include how you would check that the action had been carried out effectively. Examples could be conducting workplace inspections, audits, interviews with workers on safety tours or monitoring incident stats for improvements. 

A good technique to ensure that you’re meeting all guidance requirements is to either use headings and/or sentence starters. This makes it easier for the examiner to see that you have fulfilled the requirements. For example: 

Direct costs

The direct cost of …………

Likelihood

The likelihood is high due to …………

Current controls

With the current controls in place , the ………………

Final Section

For the last section you need to discuss how you would communicate the significant findings of the risk assessment out to the organisation. This could be through say email, toolbox talks, asking workers to read the risk assessment with sign off for example. You also need to include how you would check that the actions from the risk assessment had been carried out. Are you going to have regular action progress meetings, use software notifications or verification through workplace inspection, for example? 

Next is to state when you would next review the risk assessment taking into consideration how long it would take to complete actions. Lastly, is to give some detail on why you have chosen that date of review including any circumstances that may prompt a review sooner.

When you’ve completed your risk assessment make sure you have included your name and learner number within your risk assessment footer. Then check through your assessment to make sure to have completed all of the boxes and fulfilled all requirements using the guidance as a checklist. Finally, save your risk assessment as a pdf and upload to the NEBOSH learner platform. 

Good luck!