Safety
Job Safety Analysis / Job Hazard Analysis Practitioner
Build defensible JSAs/JHAs by defining work, identifying hazards and energy, selecting verifiable controls, managing change, and defending an original capstone.
Who this is for
Intended audience
Supervisors, planners, safety personnel, craft leads, and workers who develop or review JSAs/JHAs.
Relevant industries: Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Construction, Manufacturing, Maritime
Learning outcomes
What learners will work toward
- Explain the purpose and limitations of a JSA/JHA.
- Select jobs that merit priority analysis.
- Define scope, assumptions, interfaces, crew, tools, equipment and boundaries.
- Break work into observable steps without being too broad or too granular.
- Distinguish hazards, causes, events, exposures and consequences.
- Identify energy, line-of-fire, chemical, physical, biological, ergonomic, human-factor and environmental hazards.
- Evaluate simultaneous operations and contractor interfaces.
- Use a risk matrix consistently while understanding its limitations.
- Apply elimination, substitution, engineering, administrative/work-practice controls and PPE in the correct hierarchy.
- Identify permits, procedures, drawings, SDSs, manufacturer information and specialist roles required by the task.
- Define control owners, verification methods and residual risk.
- Conduct an effective pre-job briefing and confirm worker understanding.
- Recognize stop-work and management-of-change triggers.
- Audit a defective JSA/JHA and correct critical omissions.
- Produce and defend a complete original capstone JSA/JHA.
Course outline
11 modules
Orientation, Credential Scope, and Capstone
Explain that a JSA/JHA is a planning and communication tool, not a substitute for compliance with task-specific regulations, permits, engineering, competent-person determinations or employer authorization. Introduce the capstone, review workflow, originality requirements, evidence rules and critical-omission policy.
Purpose, Job Selection, and Analysis Timing
Teach proactive use before new, changed, non-routine, high-consequence or incident-prone work. Selection factors include injury history, potential severity, new or modified tasks, infrequent work, complex interfaces and worker concern. Explain initial analysis, pre-job validation, periodic review and event-driven reanalysis.
Scope, Assumptions, and Work-Step Decomposition
Define start and end states, crew, roles, tools, materials, equipment, location, adjacent operations and assumptions. A useful work step describes an observable action—not a hazard, control or vague phase. Steps must be detailed enough to expose changes in energy and exposure, but not fragmented into meaningless motion. Teach walk-through, worker interview, document review and task observation methods.
Hazard and Energy Identification
Use an energy-and-exposure scan: electrical, mechanical, pressure, gravity, motion, thermal, chemical, radiation, noise, biological, ergonomic and environmental sources. Add line-of-fire, caught-between, struck-by, dropped-object, fall, ignition, atmosphere, process-interaction and human-factor lenses. Require a credible causal chain rather than generic labels such as 'be careful.'
Risk Evaluation and Prioritization
Teach consequence/severity, likelihood/exposure and risk ranking using a course matrix while explaining that employers may use different systems. Avoid false precision. Record assumptions, data confidence, existing controls and worst credible consequence. Recalculate residual risk only after controls are specific and verified.
Selecting and Verifying Controls
Begin with elimination and substitution, then engineering controls, administrative/work-practice controls and PPE. Separate prevention from mitigation. Each control must be specific, assigned, available before work and verifiable. 'Use PPE' is inadequate without type, condition, limitations and interface. Controls may introduce new hazards that require another review.
Permits, Procedures, Drawings, and Specialist Interfaces
Map hot-work permits, confined-space permits, energy-control procedures, line-opening controls, lift plans, fall-protection plans, electrical work practices, respiratory programs, SDSs, P&IDs, manufacturer manuals, weather limits and emergency plans. Identify where competent or qualified persons, engineers, permit issuers, gas testers, riggers, signal persons or other specialists are required.
Human Factors, Worker Participation, and Simultaneous Operations
Effective analysis involves the people who perform and support the work. Address language, literacy, fatigue, time pressure, normalization of deviation, distractions, assumptions, communication, supervision and conflicting priorities. Simultaneous operations can invalidate otherwise adequate controls by changing traffic, energy, atmosphere, access, line of fire or emergency response.
Pre-Job Briefing, Stop Work, and Management of Change
A pre-job briefing confirms scope, sequence, hazards, controls, roles, communications, emergency actions, hold points and questions. Attendance signatures do not prove understanding; use teach-back and scenario confirmation. Changes in equipment, weather, crew, sequence, isolation, nearby work, permits or site condition require stop, reassessment and documented reauthorization.
Quality Review and Defective-JSA Audit
Review for scope mismatch, missing steps, generic hazards, weak controls, unavailable equipment, absent owners, conflicting permits, wrong document revisions, unaddressed emergency needs and unsupported risk ratings. Distinguish form completion from operational readiness. The learner corrects a deliberately defective JSA that includes hidden energy, hot work, fall, lifting and atmosphere errors.
Capstone JSA/JHA and Defense
The assigned scenario includes drawings, equipment data, SDS excerpts, work conditions, contractor interfaces and changing information. The learner submits scope, sequenced steps, hazard/consequence analysis, initial and residual risk, controls, owners, verification, permits, roles, emergency actions, briefing and change plan. A recorded or live defense tests whether the learner understands the work rather than merely completing a form.
Assessment and completion
Requirements stay explicit.
Assessment plan: 50-question protected staging QA assessment; 80% plus the critical-item rule. The 50-item draft seed bank must expand to 150 independently approved items before paid release.
Questions
Frequently asked
Is this an official OSHA or third-party certification?
No. IM Academi will identify the course provider and the exact completion outcome. It will not imply OSHA authorization, regulatory qualification, or another organization's certification unless the applicable authorization has been obtained and documented.
Does my employer still need to provide site-specific training?
Often, yes. Site hazards, procedures, equipment, emergency plans, supervision, and role authorization remain employer responsibilities. This page states course-specific boundaries but cannot replace an employer's hazard assessment.
What happens if a practical component is required?
The knowledge portion and practical evaluation are tracked separately. Final completion depends on the published course rules and a documented evaluation by an approved evaluator.
Need this course for a team?
Discuss assignments, delivery, practical coordination, and reporting needs.