msr said:
Is training safer? Or just almost too hard to put together? Does a generic risk assessment really help? Have you been trained in how to write one?
Training at the hands of the less competent has been made safer - at the cost of paperwork for the people who were already safe anyway.
I can think of an exercise one pretty hot summer in 1986 where three of our 8-man section went down with heat injury (and for the last two I mean "went down", not "oooh, I'm a bit clammy").
This was reflected across a rifle company's worth of UOTC OCdts. One lass ended up in the local mil hospital for 72hrs, having been in a really bad way (she'd been pulled into Coy HQ for the section/platoon attack phase, because people were worried about her. She then thought to help out the rest of her platoon by single-handedly filling in their trenches, as dug by a mechanical digger. She'd finished three of them before they spotted her and dragged her back into the shade).
Briefings? Nope. Extra water, or frequent replen? Nope. One water bottle, for a day of section and platoon attacks in direct sunlight, in 30C-ish temperatures (OK, I was a smug git whose entire "kit freak" purchase consisted of a second '58-patt water bottle and pouch).
The exercise director (the training major) was a tw*t of a cavalryman - INNIS DG, if I'm right - who just didn't get it. Writing even a basic risk assessment might have meant that he laid on some more water....
...although I have my doubts...