How to fill out an FLHA properly

If you need the difference between a formal hazard assessment and a field level one, that is covered on the hazard assessment overview and in more detail in formal versus field level hazard assessments. This page is the how to.

Before you start: three things that decide whether this is worth doing

The crew has to be present and talking. A card filled in by the supervisor at the tailgate while everyone loads the truck is not a field level hazard assessment. The value is in the conversation, not the paper.

The card has to be for today's actual task. Not the job description on the contract. The thing the crew is about to do in the next hour.

Something has to visibly happen when a crew writes down a hazard. Fix the thing, order the part, move the parking, or come back and tell them why not. Without that third piece the card becomes a signature exercise within a month, and no amount of enforcement brings it back.

Step by step

1. Job and crew details, including the reference to the formal assessment

Date, start time, site address or lease and unit, the task, the supervisor, and the crew names. Then the part people skip: the reference number or task name of the formal hazard assessment this work comes from.

Good entry: "Water main repair, 400 block, HA-014 Buried Utility Repair."

The mistake: leaving the reference blank, or writing the company name in the task field. Without the link, your field records and your program documents look like two unrelated piles of paper to an auditor.

2. The conditions check

Fit for duty, tickets held for today's task, permits in hand, muster point known, communication checked including the stretches with no signal, other trades on site identified, overhead and buried services located, equipment inspected.

Good entry: ticking "no signal" and writing where the nearest bar of service is.

The mistake: ticking every box before anybody has looked. If the crew cannot say where the muster point is when you ask them, the tick is worse than a blank.

3. Energy sources and exposures present today

This is the tick list: working at height, line of fire, pinch and crush, mobile 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.

Good entry: three or four ticks that match the job in front of you.

The mistake: ticking almost everything so nothing gets missed. A card with fifteen ticks tells the crew nothing about where the real risk is today.

4. Break the job into steps and name a hazard per step

Three to eight steps is usually right for a shift. Use the order the work actually happens in.

Good entry: "Excavate to the main" as a step, with "trench wall collapse, ground softened by thaw" as the hazard.

The mistake: writing one step called "do the repair" with one hazard called "injury". Steps that broad cannot produce a useful control.

5. Rate each hazard

Low, medium or high is enough on a field card. What matters is that the crew agrees on the rating out loud, because the argument about whether something is medium or high is where the useful thinking happens.

Good entry: a high rating on the one hazard that could actually kill somebody, and low ratings on the rest.

The mistake: rating everything medium. A card with no high on it, on a day with an open trench and live traffic, is a card nobody read.

6. Record the control that is actually in place

Present tense, specific, and true at the moment of signing. Not what should happen, what is there.

Good entry: "Spotter assigned to the backhoe, nobody inside the swing radius, hand signals agreed."

The mistake: listing a control that does not exist yet. If the shoring is still on the trailer, do not write shoring. Write what you are doing instead, or do not start the step.

7. Personal protective equipment for today

Only what today's work needs, including the seasonal items: traction aids, insulated gloves, high visibility outer layer in low light.

The mistake: using personal protective equipment as the control for a serious hazard. Gloves are not a control for a trench collapse, and an auditor reads that line the same way you do.

8. Changes during the shift

Leave lines for what changed, the new hazard, and what was done about it. Weather turns, another trade shows up, the pipe is deeper than the drawing said.

Good entry: "10:40, rain started, trench reinspected before re entry."

The mistake: a blank changes section on a day when the job obviously changed. Auditors cross check the card against the daily log and the timesheet.

9. The stop work statement

The card should carry the line in writing: any worker can stop the work without consequence. Read it aloud the first time a new person is on the crew.

The mistake: having the statement printed and never once honouring it. Crews remember the day somebody stopped work and what happened next, and that memory decides how the card gets filled in for the rest of the year.

10. Individual signatures

Everybody who took part signs their own line, including the operator who arrived late and the apprentice who said nothing.

The mistake: one signature for a crew of six. That single line undoes the whole card, and it is one of the fastest findings an auditor can write.

A worked example

Two person crew plus an operator, replacing a section of buried water line in a residential street in early spring. This is roughly how the card looks when it is filled in properly.

Notice that the same task step appears twice, because excavating to the main carries two genuinely different high hazards and each needs its own control. Notice that every control is something a person standing on that street could point at, which is what makes the card checkable rather than aspirational. And notice that gloves show up only against the saw work, never against the trench.

The mistakes an auditor spots immediately

• Photocopied or reused cards, same handwriting, same date format, different days.
• The same hazards listed regardless of task or weather.
• One person signing for a crew of six.
• The card filled out at the end of the shift, or in the truck afterward, which the times on the card usually give away.
• Controls listed that were not actually in place, contradicted by the photos or the incident report.
• Personal protective equipment as the only control against a serious hazard.
• No reference to the formal hazard assessment.
• Nothing in the changes section on a day when the job obviously changed.
• Cards that stop appearing during the busiest season, which is exactly the season the auditor will ask for.

The COR audit readiness checklist walks the rest of your program the same way.

How long it should take

A card for a routine task with a crew that knows the drill is a few minutes of genuine discussion. That is the honest number.

If it is taking fifteen minutes every morning, the card is too long and it will start getting invented. If it is taking thirty seconds, nobody is discussing anything and you have a signature block with decoration around it.

When a card runs long, cut in this order: drop hazard prompts that have never once applied to your work, delete any field the office does not read, merge the conditions tick list onto one line, and remove anything already captured on the equipment pre use inspection. Keep the task steps, the controls, the changes section and the signatures. Those four are the card.

Get the card

The formal worksheet is the other half of this. The field card confirms controls are in place; the worksheet is where you decided what those controls were. The full template library has the rest, including the inspection form and the corrective action tracker that closes out whatever the crew writes down.

A card that gets filled in honestly every day is worth more than a perfect one that gets filled in on Fridays. Start with the crew, keep it short, and make sure the things they write down actually go somewhere.