A Plant Risk Assessment (PRA) is a systematic process used to identify hazards, assess injury severity and likelihood, and implement controls for machinery and tools throughout their operational lifecycle. It targets hazards like entanglement, crushing, and electrical shock across operation and maintenance, prioritizing engineering controls such as physical guarding and energy isolation (LOTO) over administrative procedures and PPE.
In high-hazard industries like nuclear, aerospace, and petrochemicals, PRA refers to Probabilistic Risk Assessment, a quantitative engineering method that uses fault and event trees to calculate the exact mathematical probability and consequence of catastrophic system failures.