Portfolio

We are a general product safety consultancy offering as little or as much expert input as a business needs to navigate its way through safety requirements in legislation, standards and the expectations of consumers. Often, we are called on by companies that are already very knowledgeable about the safety of products they supply but who have come up against a nasty surprise or who are venturing into new fields of business.

Expertise can be provided in identifying hazardous features, (eg of new products) through a combination of analysis of human factors leading to injuries, searches of appropriate injury databases  and bibliography, and drawing analogies with standards requirements for products with similar potential hazards.   quantifying the risks and advising on prevention. Supplementary specialist knowledge and test facilities are available through associates when necessary, while a world-wide contact network can be used to locate the most up to date research work.

We advise on questions such as: What regulations and standards apply? Are laboratory tests necessary? Were the instructions and warnings adequate? Was misuse foreseeable? Are injuries like these common?  Our unique contribution is the breadth of experience we can bring to bear to resolving problems - from across product sectors, consumer studies, UK legal cases, European standards development and published research into hazards.

Conveniently based for central London meetings and for travel to other parts of the UK and Europe, we offer up.

to date with current thinking about acceptable risk for consumer products and consumer facilities, duties of reasonable care and due diligence, trading standards operations, product liability and statutory safety legal processes and precedents, UK government and European Commission procedures, legislative framework, wide range of product standards, standardisation issues and treatment of consumer safety issues in the UK media.

We are famiiliar with the capabilities and limitations of the relevant injury databases, including UK Mortality statistics, Home Office Fires, RoSPA, Consumer Direct and their equivalents in the USA, Australia and EU member states). Experience of analysing data from them.  Application of operational research approaches to accident prevention initiatives

With in-house backgrounds in engineering, materials science, human factors, operational research and standards writing, plus associated experts in  electrical and chemical product safety and access to specialists in many product areas, we can manage cross-disciplinary projects and assemble the conclusions into a homogenous report or presentation.

Fields of work include:

DIY and vehicle maintenance equipment. Toys.  Play and educational equipment. Pushchairs, nursery and childcare products. Choking hazards. Child-resistant features.  Ladders and step stools. Garden tools. Furniture (chairs, seating, sofas, tables, beds, storage units, cupboards, wardrobes). Food preparation, cooking and kitchen equipment. Heating and lighting.  Electrical, gas, and solid fuel appliances. Barbeques and outdoor stoves. Cigarette lighters. Cycles and scooters. Clothing. Protective equipment. Stairlifts and living aids. Exercise, sports and leisure equipment. Food and other product packaging. Labels, warnings and instructions for assembly or use.

Director:
Gordon Hayward became Director of Consumer Risk Limited in 1998, having established GH Associates as an expert witness service. He has Over thirty  years experience in the consumer safety field, including research, legislative developments, legal casework, standards work injury statistics and accident analysis,  gained a wide experience of product standards, through his work on a wide range of British and European product standards committees And as Hazard Analysis Manager in the Department of Trade and Industry’s Consumer Safety Unit.

A chartered Mechanical Engineer, a Registered Member of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, and Founding Individual Member of the Expert Witness Institute, he  has a degree in engineering from the University of Cambridge and a doctorate in metallurgy from the University of Birmingham.  A Guest editor of leading international journal “Accident Analysis and Prevention”, he has Published journal articles and international conference papers including “Risk per hour of exposure to consumer products”, and “Standards and defects in product liability claims after Tesco v Pollard” He is an appointed a Scientific Advisor on Risk Assessment to the European Commission