Safety Management During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implementing A Digital JHA Tool The Job Hazard Analysis process focuses on job tasks to identify hazards before they occur. By Chris MillerJan 20, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the need for streamlined, accessible safety analysis tools across the construction industry. This especially includes safety risk management tools that site supervisors and line employees can easily and consistently use to ensure tasks are conducted according to approved procedures and plans. Too often, conditions on site can result in silos between functions, team members and even systems and components. Sadly, COVID-19 has once again demonstrated the need for a holistic, integrated approach to consistently maintaining safe site conditions for everyone involved in construction, as well as those impacted beyond the work site in the case of the virus. William Mueller, an HSE manager at a PM/CM/PgM firm, described the firm’s success in developing and implementing a tool to consistently support site safety even under pandemic conditions. Mueller says that the key to the company’s detection and prevention efforts was the development of a user-friendly digital Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) process. The JHA focuses on job tasks to identify hazards before they occur, stressing the relationship between the worker, the task, the tools and the work environment. After identifying uncontrolled hazards with a JHA, the team then takes steps to eliminate or reduce hazards to an acceptable risk level. A Team Effort Mueller notes that creating the digital JHA process required close collaboration with the company’s IT Department. In an industry sometimes slow to adapt to new technologies, Mueller notes that working with IT was critical to developing a seamless and easy-to-implement JHA process and creating a central repository for JHA data available across the company for future reference. “This was a truly collaborative effort between the safety department and our IT experts,” says Mueller. “It definitely was not a top-down process where our construction professionals simply laid out some requirements and expected IT to deliver. IT’s contributions, beyond designing and building the inputs, outputs and structures needed for the process, included help on achieving a user experience that field employees could embrace with a minimal learning curve. A tool no one uses is not a useful tool, no matter how well intentioned or designed.” Let's block ads! (Why?)