Peregrine Foresight Overview
Peregrine Foresight is an electronic system for completing, reviewing and approving travel risk assessments for both staff and students.
Under the law, we need to undertake a risk assessment for all work related activity and know where staff are in case of emergency. Every trip away from Cambridge on University business needs a risk assessment and approval from your department. This includes trips within the U.K.
The questions for low-risk UK trips have been configured to the minimum necessary; principally information security and any risks arising from your personal characteristics. Making arrangements for contact between you and your department while you are away, even for a short trip, is also important.
Submitting a risk assessment on behalf of another individual (e.g., a PA/EA on behalf of senior staff)
Risk assessments need to be completed by the person who will actually be taking the trip as only they will know about personal factors and the details of the activity which may affect the risks and need to be mitigated.
External travellers or individuals without a CRSiD
If you are organising a trip with individuals who are external to the University and do not have a CRSiD, they can be added as a user. Please contact the International Support Helpdesk about this request.
When to complete the risk assessment
At the moment you can continue to be able to book travel, register for insurance and complete the risk assessment in any order. This may be reviewed as the system becomes more mature.
Risk assessment requirements for the University’s travel insurance policy
You need an approved risk assessment for insurance. We have reminders within the platform about obtaining insurance because it is very important (there are many uninsured trips due to lack of awareness).
When use of the Foresight has reached maturity, we aim to develop an automatic link between completion of a risk assessment and registering for insurance but this will be at the next stage of development.
Duplicating a risk assessment that was approved for a previous trip
You can use the ‘repeat option’ to duplicate a previous trip if you are preparing for an upcoming trip that will repeat the exact activities of the previous trip and the risks associated with either the location or activities have not changed. For this reason, if you select the repeat option, it is not possible to edit any part of the risk assessment other than the dates of travel.
Example scenario:
- Previous trip: visit to the special collections library at the Humboldt University of Berlin on 18-20 November 2023.
- Repeat option: visit to the special collections library at the Humboldt University of Berlin on 15-17 December 2023.
If you are travelling to a different location, completing different activities, or any risks associated with the location or your personal characteristics have changed, you must complete a new risk assessment.
It is not possible to duplicate a previous risk assessment, edit the details, then submit it for approval. For example, it is not be possible to use the ‘repeat option’ to duplicate the risk assessment for the trip in the example scenario and use it as the basis for an upcoming research visit to a different location.
Group trips
There is a Group trip type within Foresight for the trip leader to complete. We advise group members to complete their own, to take account of risks associated with personal characteristics etc.
Low risk trips
If the trip is low risk / within tolerance, a full risk assessment is not required.
Further information about the Peregrine Foresight system
Personal Profile section
We need some basic information about you in order for you to create and submit risk assessments in Foresight. In addition to your name:
- Nationality – your country of citizenship; the country which has issued your passport. If you have dual nationality record one of them here. When you come to complete a risk assessment for a trip outside the UK you will be asked if you have dual nationality and can record your second nationality and which passport you will be travelling on in the risk assessment.
- Date of birth – this helps confirm your identity and may be shared with the University’s insurers and their emergency helpline, Healix, should you need emergency assistance while on an overseas trip.
- Phone number – this should be the phone number you are contactable on while you are away on your trip, such as your mobile number or number where you are staying.
- Blood type – you don’t have to provide this information if you either don’t know your blood type or would prefer not to say.
- Photo – optional.
Trip type
You must select a trip type from the drop-down menu.
Essential questions
We have configured the questions for each type of trip to remove any that are unnecessary.
Some of the information gathered in the questions will feed into Foresight’s calculation of the risk rating for the trip. Other pieces of information will be flagged to your departmental approver so they can ensure you have taken account of them in the risk assessment. For some answers, you will be signposted to further guidance and information, once your risk assessment has been submitted.
Country, territory or location of trip
The drop down list of countries and territories within Foresight is a copy of the list of countries and territories recognised by the British government and found on the FCDO foreign travel advice webpages. Make sure you select the formal country or territory to which your destination belongs, for instance:
- Gaza Strip is part of The Occupied Palestinian Territories
- Greenland is part of Denmark
- Tahiti is part of French Polynesia
- Wales is part of the UK
The list of in-country locations offered by Foresight is pulled through from external sources. If your precise location isn’t listed, or you need to be more specific than allowed by this question, you can put more detail in Q10 when asked about the purpose of your trip. This is a free text field and there is no word or character limit.
Travel to multiple locations within a single trip
You will need to complete a risk assessment for each leg of your trip, each time the location changes. Once all the risk assessments have been submitted, it is possible to connect and merge the related risk assessments together through the ‘Link Submissions’ function:
- Go to – My Submissions
- Find the trip you would like to link
- Click the ‘More’ button
- Select ‘Link to submission’
- Choose the submission you would like to link to from the drop-down list.
Accommodation
You can enter multiple locations in your answer to the question about accommodation.
If you have not finalised your accommodation arrangements when you complete your risk assessment, you can add the information at a later date.
Country Threat
When preparing to travel, you should consider the level of risk for the activities you will undertake on your trip. There is guidance on High Risk Work/Study available, and for activities such as laboratory work or using certain equipment there would be a separate risk assessment undertaken irrespective of location. Office work, attending lectures, visiting libraries would generally be classed as low-risk activities in Cambridge. General guidance on undertaking risk assessments can be found in the Risk Assessment Handbook.
Changing your answers to essential questions
Once you have answered the essential questions, it isn’t possible to go back and change them until after they have been reviewed by your approver. This is because Foresight uses the answers to calculate the risk level for the trip.
If you need to amend information, for example to update dates or accommodation details, the approver can return your risk assessment to you in the workflow, before final signoff.
Risk Assessment
Level of risk for your trip
You do not need to know whether your trip is low, medium, or high risk before you start a new risk assessment. Foresight will calculate the level of risk for you, based on your answers to the questions. Only trips which exceed the University’s risk tolerance require a full risk assessment. Trips rated ‘Extreme’ and 'High' by Foresight need approval by both your department and SARAC.
If your trip is within tolerance, you only need to complete a brief contingency section before submitting it for departmental approval.
Risk ratings in Peregrine Foresight
Foresight uses five risk ratings instead of three: Insignificant, Low, Moderate, High, Extreme. This allows for greater granularity when assessing risk. Foresight calculates the level of risk for your trip depending on your answers to the questions. Peregrine’s risk matrix explains the 5 levels of risk.
Peregrine Foresight intelligence sources
Peregrine develops its own intelligence (it is a travel risk management company) for its risk ratings. Unlike FCDO there isn’t a single risk rating for a country, but a rating applied to 8 categories of risk. A country could be Low for Crime, but High for Political risks, and those can be addressed accordingly in the risk assessment section of the submission. The Country Report contains the detail behind the risk rating given and includes comment on relative risks for particular areas within the country. We still advise checking FCDO as a source of information, along with the Healix travel oracle app.
Risk assessment sections
If a trip is over tolerance, all categories of possible hazard must be considered. If after due consideration, you decide there are no risks associated with a particular category, you can make one entry marked as N/A under that category and score it low/insignificant. The risk assessment section is completely free text and you can enter as much or as little detail as necessary.
Finding your approvers
You will see the names of your departmental approvers at the end of your risk assessment when you are ready to submit it for approval. You should also follow your local departmental directions for what to do when you have completed a risk assessment in Foresight, as some institutions will have particular arrangements for managing the approval stage.