Approver overview
Once a traveller completes their risk assessment, they are required to submit it to a designated individual. This is someone appointed by their department to review and approve risk assessments.
The Head of Department can appoint anyone to undertake this responsibility for the department. It does not necessarily need to be the Department Safety Officer. The important thing is that 2 or more people are appointed and they have the right skills, knowledge, and competency to review and approve.
Nominating approvers
You will be asked to nominate approvers as part of the on-boarding process before launching Peregrine Foresight in your department.
If you are already using Peregrine Foresight and need to add new approvers or amend the permissions of an existing user, please contact the International Support Helpdesk.
Approver training sessions
Individuals must attend the Approver training to be given Approver permissions on the system.
The training covers both how to conduct and review a travel risk assessment as well as instruction on how to use the Peregrine Foresight system.
Dates of upcoming training sessions are available on the University Training Booking System.
Multiple approvers / splitting the ‘approver’ stage between multiple members of staff
Travellers must submit their risk assessment to an individual approver, but there is an option to set up an account in the system for a generic mailbox so more than one Approver can review submissions.
There is only one Approver stage in the platform for clearer audit trail and responsibility.
The approver doesn't have to be the only person reviewing the assessment before it finally gets approved, many people can, and we suggest should, have an input in the writing of the assessment, particularly for complex activities and locations.
If you want a risk assessment to be reviewed by several approvers (for instance, PhD supervisor, Departmental Safety Officer and HoD), two possible options for doing this are:
- Each approver reviews the risk assessment in the system one by one, sending it back to the traveller in between, like this: Traveller -> Approver 1 -> Traveller -> Approver 2 -> Traveller -> Approver 3. The traveller responds to the comments and suggestions recorded by each approver in the system in sequence.
- The first approver downloads a PDF copy and circulates it outside the system within the group of approvers. Comments and feedback are gathered offline and then entered as a consolidated response into Foresight back to the traveller.
Students can submit a risk assessment without their supervisor being aware, but you could use the supplementary documents section to upload supervisor signatures/comments.
Approver permissions
Approvers will be able to see all risk assessments sent to them for review. If a department is using a generic mailbox account as an Approver and advising all trips are sent there, this will contain all risk assessments for that department.
Re-assigning a risk assessment to another approver
If a risk assessment has been allocated to one approver and it needs to be moved to another approver (for example because of absence or balancing workloads), please contact the International Support Helpdesk. The Helpdesk can change the allocation for you.
Escalating a risk assessment to SARAC
The approver should look at the ‘Threat Assessment’ section of the risk assessment. If any risk categories have been scored ‘Extreme’ or 'High', please refer it to SARAC by selecting 'Account Manager' in the 'set status' box when you reach the Evaluation section of the document. Trips within Insignificant – Moderate ratings can be signed off by the department. If you are not sure what to do, please contact the Safety Office for advice.