What a JHA is — and when it is required
A job hazard analysis (also job safety analysis, JSA, or task hazard analysis) decomposes a specific job into ordered steps, identifies the hazards each step can produce, and assigns a control to each hazard. OSHA publishes the canonical method in its Job Hazard Analysis booklet (OSHA 3071).
No general standard says "perform a JHA", but written hazard analysis is mandatory in specific places: the PPE standard requires a written certification of the workplace hazard assessment (1910.132(d)), lockout/tagout requires documented energy-control procedures per machine, permit-required confined space entry requires hazard evaluation per space, and process safety management requires formal process hazard analyses. For everything else, the JHA is how you prove the General Duty Clause homework was done.
The four-step method
OSHA 3071 reduces the craft to four moves:
- Select the jobs that earn analysis first: highest injury history, highest severity potential, new or changed tasks, and jobs new crews inherit.
- Break the job into 5–10 observable steps by watching a competent worker perform it — not by writing the procedure from a desk.
- Identify hazards per step, asking what can go wrong, what the consequence is, and what conditions (equipment, environment, pressure) contribute.
- Assign controls per hazard using the hierarchy: eliminate, substitute, engineer, then administrative controls and PPE last — and name who implements each.
The failure modes
JHAs fail in predictable ways: written once and never revisited while the task changes; written generically for a category of work instead of the actual job; controls that quietly default to "wear PPE" for hazards an engineering fix would remove; and analyses stored where field crews never see them. A JHA the crew has not reviewed at the pre-task talk is shelf-ware.
The fix is treating the JHA as a living site document: reviewed at task kickoff, revised when the incident or near miss shows it wrong, and versioned so the current one is unambiguous.
Frequently asked questions
From site scan to draft JHA
SafeGora's site scan surfaces hazards from jobsite photos and drafts the JHA for human review — steps, hazards, and controls proposed, with your team keeping the authority.