Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) Template

There is no standard called “JHA”

OSHA never wrote a job-hazard-analysis standard, and a citation will never read 1926.JHA. What the standard does require is upstream of the paperwork. 1926.20(b)(1): the employer shall initiate and maintain such programs as may be necessary to comply with the Act. 1926.20(b)(2): those programs shall provide for frequent and regular inspections of the job sites, materials and equipment by a competent person.

And 1926.21(b)(2) puts the burden in one sentence: the employer shall instruct each employee in the recognition and avoidance of unsafe conditions and the regulations applicable to the work environment. A JHA is how most contractors discharge both duties in writing, and it is what a general contractor asks to see before you mobilise.

How to fill one in without wasting the hour

Work in this order. Skipping to controls before you have the hazards is how a JHA turns into a list of PPE.

1. Pick the task, not the trade. “Set roof trusses on bay 3” is a task. “Carpentry” is not.
2. Write the steps as verbs in the order the crew performs them. Five to ten steps is normal; twenty means you picked a phase, not a task.
3. Name the hazard, not the injury. “Unprotected leading edge at 14 ft” is a hazard. “Worker could fall” is a restatement of the step.
4. Control in hierarchy order. Eliminate, substitute, engineer, administer, then PPE. If every row on your sheet says “wear PPE”, you have written a shopping list.
5. Sign it with the crew present. The names at the bottom are the point — they are what turns the document into the instruction 1926.21(b)(2) requires.

The control hierarchy, applied to real steps

The fourth row is the one that becomes its own document. Machine-specific energy control belongs on a lockout/tagout procedure, not in a JHA cell.

Who signs, and what that signature means

1926.32(f) defines a competent person as one who is capable of identifying existing and predictable hazards in the surroundings or working conditions which are unsanitary, hazardous or dangerous to employees, and who has authorization to take prompt corrective measures to eliminate them. The second clause is the one people forget: authority is part of the definition. A foreman who can see the hazard but cannot stop the work is not a competent person for that hazard.

The full definition and where the standards demand one are in competent person under OSHA.

What a good JHA prevents

The standards most often cited by federal OSHA in fiscal year 2024 read like a JHA that was never written: fall protection general requirements (1926.501) first, hazard communication second, lockout/tagout third, ladders fourth, and fall protection training (1926.503) seventh. Scaffolding (1926.451) is eighth.

Every one of those is a predictable hazard on a task somebody could have written down first. The site inspection version of this exercise is the construction safety checklist.