After our MST, we resumed completing our program.

Through more research and debate, we have finalized our hazards list as well as their respective definitions for our program. Our hazards list encompasses near everything a personnel might face.

Here is our finalized hazards list.

Note the light blue words? as mentioned in earlier posts, these are the pop-up definitions.

here are pictures showing the amount of programming we had to do for one user activity

Before finishing our product, all that is left is to do some debugging

Whilst the research for the hazards and controls is still ongoing, we have decided to attempt to progress further with our userforms.

Another activity has been added for testing, as we realized that to test one activity at a time is a little tedious.

MST week~

First of, let's start this post of with some closure with regards to the mid-point review.

The feedback from the panel was quite positive ! =D
We even received some tips and feedback from them about certain things to change such as the classification of risk level in the final "printable" version.

Now, the past week went by quickly as we were rushing to expand our hazards list and its respective controls.

We have added some new ones such as
thermal hazards- for extreme surface temperature,
and ergonomical hazard- for awkward postures relating to musculoskeletal disorders. (apparently, its an "in" thing now)
Also, we have decided to change some definitions in the current hazards list. Some definitions, we felt inappropriate after conducting further research and thus had to be edited.

An example would be this electrical hazard definition as seen above.

The research is still going on and we hope to complete the hazards and the controls as soon as possible so as  to be able to start completing the other components of our form.
Thats it for now.

Our mid-point review was yesterday. It went quite well, we managed to clear up the bugs in the userform so the demonstration went quite smoothly.

The powerpoint was a short one, as we focused mainly on the demonstration to show the potential of our program.

The Q&A was a bit bumpy, there were a couple of questions we werent able to answer quickly enough and hesitated a little, such as the hierarchy of risk control.

Well, here is the hierarchy.

We learn from mistakes and can regurgitate this without fail now. lol

Waiting for the general feedback from the panel regarding our presentation.

But for now,

back to fyp~

We are in preparation for the mid-point review here. As mentioned a few posts back, while we have decided to cease activity on the excel spreadsheet and focus more on the userform instead, some things still had to be touched up so that it can be presented as our initial work for the mid point review.

Now, our excel spreadsheet, albeit having its limitations, is in presentable shape. As such, we can now focus much more of our time on the userform here.

As the mid-point review is just around the corner, we have to rush to finish the steps for at least one activity to be presented to the panel, and adjust a few bugs and error messages we got along the way and also check for any typos.

here are some screenshots of where our userform stands now.

This is the start page

As you can see, we have an extremely limited amount of hazards for now, as time is short and we dont have enough of it to complete the list before the mid point review.

 So is the activity. As of now, only one activity (tester) can be completed. We will add in more. This is once again, for demonstration purposes.

The user info page

Wish us all the best for our mid-point review!
More updates after

An update on our excel spreadsheet. This is the final layout we will be using during our presentation for the midpoint review.

Here are a few images of the data entry page

This is the layout of the activity and hazard identification part of our risk assessment activity

There is a new function that we have added allowing the user to choose the number of hazards associated with a particularly activity. When a number is entered into the box as shown below, a corresponding number of blank rows will appear to allow the user to input their different hazards.

Finally the review page is properly linked with our data entry.

E.g. 2 hazards are chosen in the data entry page for an activity. The green arrow shows that it is still the same activity and that 2 hazards are under it. The red arrow shows that a note will be given at the side of the page to show the number of hazards associated with the given activity. When printing of the review page, the note is not included. That is because the dotted lines show the boundaries for one printed page. 

Now that the structure and formatting of our userform is more or less done, we have decided to divert more of our attention towards its main content, i.e the hazards definitions, lists, as well as whether to include it or not.
Firstly, prior research to this had to be done. The material that we used also had to give us a wider perspective on what we aimed to accomplish. As such, reading material from various sources was what we did.
However, we also decided as Singapore had one of the most stringent standards when coming to risk assessment, as well as the fact that our users for this user form would be based here in singaopore, taking the singapore standard as our base shouldnt mislead us too much.
Our sources include:
mom.gov.sg
epa.gov/riskassessment
hse.gov.uk
bfr.bund.de/en/home.html
groups.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis375/projects/risktable/risks.html

****edit****
now that the current hazards list is finalized, images will be uploaded after mid point review

We have arrived at a unanimous decision that macros is much more useful than just doing the usual excel, even though it is much more complicated, most of our user forms has been based on VBA.
Seeing that we have to do a basic of 3 types of ra, for office, lab, and plant, we began to construct the simplest one; office ra and turns out, it isnt as simple as we thought.

Also, our list of hazards and its details are still being constructed but through research and expanding our list, our current hazards is as so.

Mechanical hazard: Moving parts, loose parts that can be detached

Physical hazard: Heavy objects, sharp objects, objects that can cause scrapes, cuts and bruises

Chemical hazard: Corrosive chemicals, irritants, chemicals with extreme pH, highly volatile chemicals, carcinogenic chemicals

Knocking hazard: Sharp or hard protruding parts

Fire hazard: Flammable substances, surfaces with high temperatures, objects that can cause ignition

Freezing hazard: Surfaces with extremely cold temperature, sub zero environments, substances kept at extremely low temperatures

Toxic hazard: Liquids or gases that will cause adverse effects on our health when come close to

Electrical hazard: Objects using electricity, electrical outputs, electrical conductors

Radiation hazard: Objects that radioactive

Noise hazard: Loud noises that can cause hearing impairment, sounds that will affect your ability to work

Biological hazards: Bacteria, viruses, microorganisms

Visual hazards: Bright lights (Welding)

Environmental hazards: CFCs, pollutants

Another problem has surfaced in our user form. As shown, the default user form only has one name and designation to fill in, keeping things simple. However, as this form is on excel, adding names and designations would be highly impossible if the user so required.

This was a problem that even the functions on excel were unable to solve and as such, we had to rely on our proficiency on VBA macros programming. to achieve the following.

We made it such that when the user entered the number of names, the corresponding number of boxes would appear for the user to fill in.

Thus, when the user enters 3 names, 3 boxes would appear and if he enters 5, 5 boxes would appear.

However, we had to decide on a limit of numbers the user can input.

The code for the above is as so.

Complicated eh?

Prior to our previous meeting with our supervisor, we were informed that the labeling for the forms were too vague. We were also alerted to the fact that not many people have a firm grasp on how to conduct a proper ra and thus, will not be able to fill in the form appropriately. Therefore, we have attempted to alter the labels to phrase it into questions instead of just a normal label as well as color code it into shades that even someone who is colour blind can differentiate.

Also, we have also managed to make it such that when the user selects a choice, it will correspond to the matrix we have set in the background, providing the user with an automated risk level of whether the activity is low risk, medium risk, or high risk.

This is how the corresponding matrix looks in the background with the code at the top.

This week, we believed that we have truly truly began our fyp in earnest. After a few weeks of reading up and preparation, as well as experimenting with the various excel formulas, we have after long last, managed to integrate the basic RA form into excel albeit with some minor glitches regarding the space and labeling.

with that, and following the excel formulas we learnt a few weeks back, we could integrate the drop down list as well as the ra matrices into this basic sheet.

Now that the basic form is up, we can start refining it and removing the problems that people face when performing ra.

5
During the last meeting with our supervisor, we once again presented our findings for the past two weeks. Apparently, there is a glitch in our user form and it requires us to blank out the last review date so the rest of the form can still be filled out without it.

Subsequently, we also continued working on our VBA macros which involved complicated strings of codes meant to create a more versatile and creative excel document. In short, this allowed us to create forms that a normal excel spreadsheet is not capable of.

The above image shows a very typical function we were able to add via macros. It is a button which makes the entire RA seem more interactive and user friendly as compared to a normal excel whereby people tend to roam about and not complete the task.

4
Within the past 2 weeks, we have completed our critical report as well as a portion of our research on both RA and excel.
Thee  Report criticized was: Development of Excel-based System Interface for Biology (DCHE 0816)
We found this to be an insight on the progress and end result of our fyp in the next year as well as how we think a good report should be structured.
In addition we have conducted research on our microsoft excel via books we have found.
The step by step guide in the books have assisted us in acheiving great milestones in this project.

So far, we have made a good start in excel.
From applying what we have learnt so far, the main spreadsheet for risk assessment has been completed and we have attempted in applying excel formulas such as VLOOKUP and even creating a user friendly drop down list we can use.

3
This week, in order to visualize further our task at hand as well as to get a better understanding on how to do an RA. Furthermore, this enables us to comprehend and fathom the pain and troubles that a normal person doing an RA would face so we know what our user form has to encompass in order to reduce the problems faced when constructing an RA.

Firstly, we went to W316 to review the practicals there and observe the preventive measures in place. Subsequently, Ms Serene assisted us in the location of the respective files regarding the practicals so we could begin doing our sample RA form.
We realized that one of the many troubles of doing an RA is looking out for the possible risk in the first place. Considering every possibility and the probability of that event occurring became a huge frustration. In addition, some of the risks we identified had no preventive measures somewhat. Risks such as tripping and knocking hazards were a bother as even though we understood that there could be a high probability of it occurring, there was not much we could do to mitigate its effects. One could wear safety helmets and boots, but that would still be insufficient to protect every area of the body. An arm, the back or even the chest can be bruised and there does not seem to be any plausible way to circumvent that.

In the end, we somehow completed it with the approval (albeit with some add-ons and comments) of our supervisor. the screenshots are as follows:

FYP Meeting 2

The second meeting of our fyp consisted of showing our supervisor Mr Koh, what we have completed in the past week and also another short briefing on what we next had to do.

Apparently, there are mainly 3 types of RAs which we have to thoroughly understand; lab, plant, as well as office. We were advised to start on the office RA first as it was the smallest and simplest
and therefore the easiest to complete. It was to be a start to slowly expand into the other categories.

However, there was still one question on our mind: Why is RA so important for our course?
Risk assessment is actually a process in which hazards are identified, risks are evaluated, ways to control or mitigate risks are determined, identify who is at risk, and to determine if existing hazard controls are sufficient or more should be done.
It is essential for a chemical engineer as chemical engineering is a job or certain risks and proper risk assessment can prevent these accidents from occuring if properly planned at the design stage.

One of the ways to assess the risks is to use a matrix. The matrices more commonly used are 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5. We were to transcribe this format into our excel spreadsheet with the accompanying calculation mechanism.

                                                        An example of a 3x3 matrix

                                                                           5x5 matrix
Following that, we were to also complete our critic report.