Job Safety Analysis (JSA) Template

What a JSA is for

A job safety analysis is the document that makes a crew stop and think about one task before they start it. It is deliberately narrow: not the company safety program, not the site safety plan, but this lift, this trench, this hot-work job, today, with these people. Its value is in the sequence — step, hazard, control — because it forces the question “what can hurt someone here?” at each point in the work rather than once in general.

General contractors ask for a JSA on high-hazard tasks because their site safety plan and their insurer require it, and because after an incident it is the first document anyone reads. A signed JSA shows the hazard was identified, a control was chosen, and the crew was told. No JSA, or a generic one, shows the opposite.

Field by field

• Task step — what is physically done, in order. A step is a unit of work with its own hazards: “rig the unit” and “lift and swing” are different steps because the hazards change.
• Potential hazards — what can hurt someone, written as the event: a fall from the edge, a pinch at the curb, a struck-by from the swinging load, heat stress. “Roof” is a location, not a hazard.
• Controls / safe practices — how each hazard is eliminated or reduced, in the order of the hierarchy of controls: eliminate it, substitute a safer method, engineer it out, then administrative controls (exclusion zones, permits, a named signal person), then PPE. A control must answer its hazard; a hard hat does nothing for a fall.
• Responsible — the person who makes sure the control is in place for that step. Not “everyone.”
• PPE and permits — the checkboxes at the top. Permits are gates; PPE is the last line.
• Crew sign-off — the acknowledgment that each person took part in the review, understands the hazards and controls, and will stop work if conditions change. That last clause is the important one.

A worked example: a crane day

The completed example is JSA-014 from a mechanical subcontractor’s crane day on a medical office building — setting four rooftop units from a crane pad in the parking lot on August 3, 2026. The foreman prepared it as the competent person, the GC’s superintendent reviewed it, and the seven steps run from the pre-lift meeting to demobilizing the crane.

Read step 4, the lift and swing. The hazards are the suspended load, wind gusts and struck-by. The controls are specific and checkable: nobody under the load, stop work above 20 mph or the operator’s limit, radio contact between the operator and a named signal person, exclusion zones on the ground and on the roof. Step 2 handles roof access — harness tied off to certified anchors within six feet of the edge, a warning line at fifteen feet, curb openings covered until the unit lands. The PPE row has fall-arrest harness ticked; the permits row has the crane lift plan, the overhead-line check, the weather check, a rescue plan and posted emergency numbers. Seven crew members signed, including the crane operator from the rigging subcontractor. The toolbox talk from the same morning covers the same day at the crew level, and both are filed with the daily report.

JSA, JHA, toolbox talk and safety plan

• JSA / JHA — this document. One task, step by step, signed by the crew doing it.
• Toolbox talk — a short crew meeting on a topic with a sign-in sheet, held regularly regardless of the task. On a high-risk day, the talk sets the theme and the JSA carries the detail.
• Site-specific safety plan — the GC’s document for the whole project: emergency procedures, site rules, who is the competent person for what. The JSA sits under it.
• Daily report — where the JSA number, the safety meeting and any incident or near miss are recorded for the day. File the signed JSA with it.

Common mistakes this form is built to catch

• A hazard column full of locations and equipment instead of events that hurt people.
• Controls that do not answer the hazard — PPE listed against a struck-by hazard.
• “Everyone” in the responsible column.
• A JSA copied from the last job with the date changed. The Excel version flags a step without a control; it cannot flag a control that does not fit the site — only a crew review does.
• Filling it out in the truck and filing it unsigned. The three-minute review is the point.
• Not revising it when the crew or conditions change — the revision line at the bottom is there to be used.

Reference the JSA by number in the safety section of that day's daily report, so the analysis, the crew that signed it and the work it covered can be matched up later. Our guide to what to include in a daily report covers the safety section along with the rest.