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Table of contents
1) Purpose.
2) Applicability.
3) Summary.
4) Definitions.
5) Personnel qualifications/responsibilities.
6) Procedure.
7) Criteria, checklists, or other standards.
8) Records management
9) Quality control and quality assurance.
Job Hazard Analysis at the Work Place
1) Purpose
Hazards and risks in the work place pose a significant threat to employees as well as organizations, through losing employees, destroyed equipments, and accidents that could cause massive losses. Having a job hazard analysis in the work place ensures that all people are protected against all forms of danger that could arise from the specific task each of the employees is performing. In general, a job hazard analysis in the organization is meant to create an environment with the least hazards and risks to the people as possible. It also ensures protection for the employees through laying measures and procedures to be followed in all tasks of the organization.
In this research, the focus is identifying the risks associated with organizations, in order to eliminate them through coming up with strategies that ensure the hazard does not pose a threat to people, or, people are protected from the risk. Many workers every day might be injured or even killed in their tasks, leaving the organizations with the responsibilities of compensating workers. For the improvement and reduction of such cases, it is important for organizations to establish appropriate procedures in the work place, which if followed strictly, ensure the safety of all the people involved. These procedures must be well stipulated for the workers to follow, and the workers must be aware of all the procedures.
2) Applicability
A job hazard analysis in the work place exists as a tool for identifying and reducing hazards or risks in any industry. A job hazard analysis is also known as job safety analysis. This is a technique used by organizations to analyze a job or task in terms of the risks and injuries it can pose to an employee or anybody else. Job hazard analysis is supposed to ensure that all people including employees, staff, customers and other stakeholders associated with the organization are safe from physical, emotional, psychological, accidents, among other forms of harm at the work place. Job hazard analysis involves identifying any dangers associated with a certain job, hence, putting the person in a better position of handling the hazard. After identifying the hazards, they are assessed, and an action is formulated. The last step a job hazard analysis should ensure, is laying a standard operating guideline (SOG) that is broadly stated telling workers what operations they are supposed to conduct to ensure safety. For each task, a standard operating procedure (SOP) is formulated that states specific procedures to be followed to ensure safety. With SOG and SOP, the job hazard analysis becomes very applicable since it gives specific procedures and guidelines, which ensure safety for all when well followed.
With job hazard analysis, it is easy to formulate actions that can be used against hazards. For instance, if the hazard involves falling off a high-raised working area, a barrier can be used when there is a person in the risky position. Without identifying the particular position as a hazard, no measure can be taken. Hence, the job analysis is very applicable in ensuring safety. Construction organizations are faced with many hazards at the construction sites, and before embarking on any construction, a job hazard analysis has to be conducted. With the identified hazards, the company or organization can take the necessary measures of ensuring protection for its workers. The hazard analysis is the first process of ensuring safety within any organization. It lays a base under which safety measures are to be taken.
3) Summary
Construction industry is one of the many industries faced by a daily likelihood of accidents and hazards. The process of job hazard analysis involves three parts, the first being identification of the risks. This involves analyzing a task, and dividing it in to several parts and identifying any possible danger such as loss of control. The second process is an assessment of the severity of the risk or damage that can be caused by the risk identified. Some danger could mean, life, while others could mean minor injuries, or health issues. The final process in job hazard analysis is identifying the action that can be taken to minimize the risk or eliminate it. More so, the action could be directed towards protecting people from its harm in case it happens or reduce its severity.
However, with the construction industry unlike others, it is constantly changing from one form to another, with the risk changing all the time; hence, SOP and SOG will differ with every construction site. Therefore, a hazard analysis is a necessary tool with each construction site. This industry faces many hazards, with the major ones being physical such as the risk of falling objects and working on high raised levels, as well as machines, pose a hazard. More so, there is a lot of dust in constructions sites, and this poses a big health problem for not only employees, but also people around construction sites. The safety of the workers is quite at risk considering that some heavy materials have to be lifted up high depending on the construction, and incase anything went wrong, a big danger for those below would be present. More so, in construction sites, there are bound to be many workers.
Workers at construction sites deal with many tools and items that pose a risk to their safety. Starting from the smallest tool, a hammer, high-speed cutting devices among sharp objects such as nails and drills, the workers are at risk. More so, they are at risk from some of the chemicals used such as cement, whose dust can be quite hazardous to human health, among other chemicals such as paints. Identifying the hazards involved with such equipments and chemicals is crucial in formulating the safety measures that can be taken to ensure the protection of workers. For instance, for hand held equipments, protective gear such as gloves can be provided. On the other hand, for sharp objects heavy boots can be provided, while protective headgears can be provided for small falling object. More so, other measures and precautions can be implemented to ensure workers are protected, such as ensuring to put up preventive barriers where there are possibilities of falling, or areas with moving equipments.
To ensure safety, the workers have to be aware of the precautions they have to take with the equipments, and the procedures of using them. This will require training the workers, as well as ensuring the right people with experience of using such equipments are recruited. Many workers are bound to use their own skills in the construction if there are no other precautions put in place, hence, having precautions put in place will prevent things going out of control. Moreover, considering the dynamic nature of constructions sites, each construction site is different from each other, with different risks in terms of the events that might go out of control. Despite the equipments and materials used in construction sites, other dangers such as several things going out of control are highly likely.
With such a risk of things going out of control, measures to be taken vary with every construction site. Such risks require assessing the events that are likely to go out of control, and the potential victims to the danger posed. An event going on in a certain section might pose a threat to other workers in another section. Hence, identifying such danger would allow the management to take precautions such as scheduling the two events at different times (Rozenfeld, Sacks, Rosenfeld & Baum, 2010). For this reason, it was identified that job hazard analysis in a construction industry was not sufficient, and more was needed. What was needed was the assessment of jobs independently from any time or even place (Rozenfeld et al, 2010). The method that came up was Construction Job Safety Analysis (CJSA). It involves three steps, the first being identification, where hazards are identified just like in the ordinary job hazard analysis. The second step is an assessment of the probability of the event occurring, where the likelihood of a certain event going out of control is assessed. The third step is assessing the severity, the same way the other method does.
Despite construction industries requiring an assessment of the events that are likely to get out of control, ensuring safety measures will require cooperation between all the people involved. For the workers, considering they are the ones at most risk, they require being aware of what procedures are put in place, and they should be involved in formulating some of the measures considering they come with expertise concerning such matters. More so, before equipments are committed to the construction work, they have to be checked by the engineers. Ensuring every procedure and precaution ids carried out should be the responsibility of all the people involved, and they should all work towards ensuring there are no injuries or accidents in the construction sites.
4) Definitions
A hazard is a potential harm that is posed by a particular condition, activity or material if it is not well attended to, or if not well used according to the procedures put forward. They result in harm top people such as health problems, physical injuries ad even death. Controlling them as early as they are identified is the only way to ensure safety of the potential victims (Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 2002).
A Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) is a tool that is used by organizations across all industries especially manufacturing and construction in industries, focused on assessing job tasks to identify and assess likelihoods and recommend action of the hazards involved. Its major focus is on the risks posed by a task in a job to a worker, and the job environment. It identifies hazards posed by a specific task before they occur, which is its first step, then assesses the severity or the amount of damage it is likely to cause, and finally recommends an action be taken to ensure the hazard is minimized (OSHA, 2002).
Standard Operating Guidelines is a broad statement of direction of operations in an organization that are applied by all people. They are designed to ensure workers are following the guidelines for safety, and they are formulated after hazards are identified. This is almost the same with Standard Operating Procedures, SOP, which is specific to a task, meant to be the routine, in accordance with certain specifications laid towards achieving a certain result. This is formulated in a job hazard analysis with the aim of ensuring a procedure that maintains the safety of the worker and everybody else involved with the task.
Construction Job Safety Analysis (CJSA) is another tool that resembles JHA, but designed for construction. It follows the same rules, except that it assesses the probability of an activity going out of control, where the JHA assesses the severity that a certain hazard would cause. It assesses each construction different from each other, in order to account for the difference caused by different types of constructions (Rozenfeld et al, 2010).
5) Personal qualifications/responsibilities
For a job hazard, analysis to be successful and applicable there has to be qualified personnel carrying out the analysis. The team conducting the safety analysis must be highly qualified and must have experience in the task they are analyzing. In the construction industry, the safety team must be qualified in all the tasks they analyze, and meet any minimum requirements needed. For instance, to analyze the hazard caused by equipments such as concrete pumps in the construction site, the person analyzing the equipment must be a qualified engineer, who has knowledge of what could cause loss of control, and who could be harmed.
The responsibilities of the safety team or manager will involve anticipating the hazards, and coming up with procedures and guidelines to ensure minimal danger. Moreover, they will be charged with analyzing the severity of the hazards, and sharing information with all the workers, considering they are the potential victims of the hazards. The major task should not be identifying the hazards, alone, but also formulating strategies that will ensure total safety and implementation. One of the strategies should be hiring highly qualified workers with skills and knowledge of the task and experience. This will make it easier to implement the strategies formulated, and safety will be maintained.
Procedure
The first procedure in safety analysis as mentioned earlier is the identification of the hazards. After identification, several procedures follow, starting with:
- Formulating strategies in form of procedures and guidelines that are meant to ensure safety.
- Training the workers and informing them of any changes in the procedures and guidelines, especially those handling the most hazardous equipments is necessary to ensure they are well used to avoid the risks. More so, they should be taught the importance of putting protective gear (OSHA, 2002).
- The environment should be made conducive to ensure proper working conditions in order to avoid accidents due to poor working environments, such as ensuring dust is controlled as much as possible to enable clear vision, and should be conducive for the equipments such as enough space for bulldozers to move along.
- Inspection of the site should be carried out regularly to ensure everything is in order especially for areas where there is more probability of losing control.
With these procedures, safety can easily be monitored and checked to ensure the hazards are minimized to the least level (Rozenfeld et al, 2010).
Criteria, checklist, or other standards
Having criteria for safety assessment on the construction sites is very crucial for ensuring the right areas and materials checked. It should be easy to understand and use. One of the criteria that can be used is putting down all the areas involving a certain task that might be risky. This way, all the areas involved with this task will be assessed. For instance, all areas on the site using electricity such as welding should be assessed, to ensure all people around these areas are aware of the danger. Having the best criteria ensures protection for all the people around the construction site.
A checklist of the areas needing to be checked should be made, to ensure they are all assessed, and ensure none is left behind. More so, a checklist will help the safety team in managing safety within the site. This also helps in evaluation of the safety conditions of the site, and whether the target set by the safety team is accomplished. A checklist also ensures there is no likelihood of forgetting any areas for checking.
Other standards involved in construction sites safety are set by the government, and it is up to the constructor to ensure they are followed. Also, there are set standard on all equipments from the manufacturers, which should also be followed not unless under the instructions of an expert.
Records management
The keeping of records is very important for the purpose of evaluation in the future. Keeping record of the operations helps in assessing the safety at the construction site, where one may be able to know what went wrong in the event that go out of control. A record of all the injuries, how they occurred, and when, helps the safety team in understanding what causes most accidents at the sites. This will help in formulating better strategies in the future to ensure such injuries do occur again. Good management of records of the on going work ensures quality informed decisions concerning safety. Having all risk factors recorded, managing them can be easy and controlling them will take less time considering what matters is information to make certain actions. More so, this will help the workers in understanding the safety precautions they are required to take, and solutions available in case anything happens.
Quality control and quality assurance
Quality control in all organization is very important, and this is no exemption for the construction industry. All customers are interested in quality assurance that upon completion of the work, everything will be up to standards. Quality control should be ensured through evaluating the quality of other product at the end of the work, such as quality of the walls; are they straight, firm, and smooth enough? Such quality is achieved through evaluation and good procedures, as well as safety of workers. Both should be observed (Channing & Ridley, 2007). This will have to be met considering the government standards put in place to ensure safety considering low quality walls might pose a danger to people after completion. Hence, considering construction is expensive and time consuming, companies cannot afford to construct low quality constructions.
References
Channing, J. & Ridley, J. R. (2007). Safety at Work.Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (2002). Job Hazard Analysis. U.S Department of Labor.
Rozenfeld et al. (2010). Construction Job Safety Analysis. Safety Science 48: 491-498.
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