Hazard assessments: formal and field level

This distinction is the most commonly muddled part of a safety program, and getting it wrong affects several audit elements at once. It is worth twenty minutes to fix properly.

The two documents, side by side

The relationship in one sentence: the formal assessment is the thinking, and the FLHA is the checking.

Why crews stop taking FLHAs seriously

This is worth saying plainly, because the fix is not more enforcement.

An FLHA becomes a signature exercise when the card asks for things the crew cannot see the point of, or when it is the same card every day regardless of the work. Once that happens, the card stops protecting anybody and becomes paperwork. Everybody involved knows it, including the supervisor collecting them.

The causes are consistent:

• The card is too long. A card that takes fifteen minutes gets filled out afterward in the truck, or invented.
• It asks for the wrong things. Generic hazard lists that never match the job train people to tick without reading.
• Nobody ever does anything with them. If a hazard recorded on a card never produces a visible response, the crew learns that writing it down is pointless.
• One person signs for everybody. The moment that becomes normal, the discussion has stopped happening.
• It is treated as the office's document. If the purpose is understood to be audit protection rather than crew protection, it will be completed accordingly.

The practical repair, in order: shorten the card, make the hazard prompts match the actual work, respond visibly to at least one thing a crew writes down, and require individual signatures because everybody took part. Then the card is worth filling in, and the audit evidence follows as a by product.

What goes on a good FLHA

Keep it to one page. The card in our template library is built to this shape.

1. Job and crew. Date, time, site, the task being performed today, supervisor, and a reference to the formal hazard assessment this task comes from. That reference is the link auditors look for and it is usually the missing piece.
2. Conditions check. Fit for duty, tickets held for today's task, permits in hand, emergency plan and muster point known, communication checked including the areas with no signal, other trades identified, overhead and buried services located, equipment inspected.
3. Energy sources and exposures present today. A tick list: working at height, line of fire, pinch and crush points, moving equipment, traffic, electrical, stored or pressurized energy, hot work, confined space, excavation, unstable ground, hazardous products, noise, dust, cold or heat, manual handling, wildlife, working alone.
4. Task steps, hazards and controls. The core of the card. Break the job into steps, name the hazard for each, rate it, and record the control actually being used.
5. Personal protective equipment required today.
6. Changes during the shift. A few lines to record what changed, the new hazard, and what was done about it. Auditors like this section because it shows the card stayed alive after the morning.
7. Stop work statement, and individual signatures. Everybody who took part signs, and the card states that any worker can stop the work.

What goes on a good formal hazard assessment

1. Task identification, with a reference number, a version, and the equipment, materials and related procedures.
2. Participants, including at least one worker who performs the task. An auditor reads this list first, and an assessment written alone at a desk is visible from across the room.
3. A written risk rating method. Severity against likelihood is the common approach. What matters to an auditor is not which method you use but that it is written down, applied consistently, and understood by the people using it.
4. Rated twice: before controls and after. The second rating is the residual risk, and it is the number that says whether the task is acceptable to run as planned.
5. Controls in hierarchy order. Eliminate, substitute, engineer, administer, then personal protective equipment. If personal protective equipment is the only control listed against a serious hazard, the assessment is not finished. This is the most common substantive weakness I see in formal assessments.
6. Training and competency the task requires, and how competency is verified.
7. Emergency considerations specific to the task: what could go seriously wrong, what rescue or response is needed, who is called.
8. A dated review history, including reviews where nothing changed.

What auditors actually check

Both documents feed several of your certifying partner's audit elements, so weakness here spreads.

• Do the formal assessments name the tasks you really perform? Generic assessments bought in a binder are identified immediately.
• Did workers take part? Names on the participant list, and workers in interviews who recognize the document.
• Do controls follow the hierarchy, or does everything default to gloves and a hard hat?
• Do the field cards reference the formal assessment?
• Do cards exist across the whole audit period? Expect a random week from well over a year ago to be requested.
• Do the hazards on the card match the work the crew was actually doing that day, cross checked against other records?
• Can a worker describe the hazards of their current task without reading the card?

That last one is the real test. A crew that can describe its hazards has a working hazard assessment process, whatever the paperwork looks like. A crew that cannot has paperwork.

Free templates for both

Direct downloads, no email required, in print ready PDF and editable DOCX.

The full library also has the audit readiness checklist, incident report, corrective action tracker, inspection form and orientation checklist.

Related

• COR audit readiness checklist walks your whole program the way an auditor will.
• What documents does a COR auditor ask for? covers what a weak version of each document looks like next to a strong one.
• COR certification in Canada is the overview, including which certifying partner covers your province.