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At the core of a successful Job Hazard Analysis process you must ensure that there are risk assessment procedures and protocols that are effective and comprehensive in identifying risk. This risk assessment process includes following elements:
- Conduct a risk assessment of your facility. Risk is the combination of potential severity and exposure to hazards. This assessment is not just a compliance inspection of your facility. It must be a well designed risk assessment procedure that defines the baseline of where you will begin in developing your Job Hazard Analysis. During the risk assessment you must ask some of the follow questions to understand the climate of the facility: What is the current culture? What is currently happening? What are the hazards associated with each job and how can we break them down into categories? What type of current/potential risks exist? Who is exposed to the current/potential risk? Have there been changes in materials, tools, equipment, procedures, employees, etc? The assessment should identify jobs, steps, and task with a history of injury and loss producing events and/or other damages. In addition, the assessment must identify highest potential of risk that can cause injury or damage. This risk assessment will look at jobs that may have no history of loss but show a high potential for severe injury or damage and only "luck" has prevented an incident.
- Develop site-specific controls. When developing site-specific control procedures, you must take into account the highest risk priority based on the hazards identified, the agreed upon severity and the overall impact on the facility. The key is to design both a temporary (interim solution), as well look at a long term solutions that will help to reduce the potential for injury and loss producing events. The "Hierarchy of Controls" (According to ANSI AIHA Z10 2005, these controls are Elimination, Substitution, Engineering, Warnings, Administrative, and Personal Protective Equipment) is used to work through the process for the most effective risk and hazard control.
- Establish an evaluation team. This team will suggest recommendations and implementation strategy. Once site-specific controls are developed there must a timely feedback to assure all employees and management know that their concerns have been acted upon and have the results validated.
- Analyze and begin monitoring controls and their effectiveness. Typically this is one of the weakness parts (follow up and corrective actions) of any process, as we tend to move on to other perceived problems, leaving past issues behind!
Developing an effective Job Hazard Analysis involves an examination of your vision (objectives), action planning skills, core administrative criteria, and current hazard recognition methods and document procedures. This evaluation will go a long way in fully incorporating use of the Job Hazard Analysis into the normal routine ensuring that it is being used consistently.
About this Author
I am very passionate about developing an effective Job Hazard Analysis process. I am on a journey of discovery and want to spread the word about Job Hazard Analysis, the proposed OSHA I2P2, ANSI Z10 2005, and other related-safety ideas. http://www.myjobhazardanalysis.com
http://www.myjobhazardanalysis.com/job-hazard-analysis-use-of-hazard-recognition-and-control/
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