How to track job hazard analyses as a leading safety indicator

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 16:21:56 -0400

A job hazard analysis (JHA) breaks one task into its steps and lists the hazards and controls for each step. The foreman or competent person usually writes it with the crew at the work area before work starts. Once the crew signs it, the JHA is also a record with a date, a project, a task, the crew’s names and a risk score for every step. Count those records across your jobs each week and you have a safety measure you can read before anyone is hurt.

Leading and lagging indicators

OSHA’s guide to leading indicators defines lagging indicators as counts of events that already happened, such as the number or rate of injuries, illnesses and fatalities. Leading indicators measure the events that lead up to an incident, so a contractor can act on a failing control or an open hazard before it turns into one.

The guide lists suggested indicators by program area. For worker participation, one of them is the number of workers involved in developing task-specific job hazard analyses. For hazard identification, it suggests the percentage of daily, weekly or monthly inspections completed, and the percentage of hazards abated in the same day, week or month they were found. OSHA also asks that each indicator be specific, measurable, accountable, reasonable and timely, and that it be stated as a number, rate or percentage you can follow over time.

The lagging numbers for construction

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counted 1,034 fatal occupational injuries in private construction in 2024, out of 5,070 for all US workers. The 2024 counts are final. Falls, slips and trips caused 389 of the construction deaths, more than any other event. Specialty trade contractors accounted for 606 deaths. Roofing contractors accounted for 120, and 96 of those were falls.

Fatal occupational injuries by event, private industry, 2024, final. Blank cells have no data or fall below BLS publication criteria. BLS totals include cases not shown by event.
Event or exposure	Private construction	Specialty trade contractors	Roofing contractors
Falls, slips, trips	389	253	96
Transportation incidents	244	134	5
Exposure to harmful substances, environments	187	106	13
Contact incidents	161	82	2
Violent acts	46	27
Explosions and fires	5
All events	1,034	606	120

Source: bls.gov

How a JHA is scored

Free Safety Report, the free JHA site that ResponseVault runs, scores each job step as likelihood times consequence, each on a scale of 1 to 5. A likelihood of 1 means nobody has seen it happen on comparable work, and 5 means it will probably happen today without controls. A consequence of 1 is an injury that needs no first aid, and 5 is a fatality or permanent disability. The score, from 1 to 25, falls into five bands:

1 to 2, Negligible. Proceed with normal supervision.
3 to 4, Low. The crew reviews the controls on the JHA.
5 to 9, Moderate. Proceed only with the listed controls in place, confirmed by the supervisor.
10 to 16, High. Do not start until added controls bring the score down, with supervisor sign-off.
20 to 25, Extreme. Stop and redesign the task.

Each step is scored twice, first as if no controls were in place and then with the controls the crew will use. The second score is the residual risk, and it decides whether work starts. Free Safety Report says these bands are its own convention and that many companies use different ones, so use your company’s matrix if it has one.

The site’s worked example is a crew setting beam cages and tying a slab mat on an elevated deck. Four of the six steps start in the High band. With controls such as perimeter guardrail, opening covers, tag lines and impalement caps, none of the six is High.

Example JHA for setting and tying rebar on an elevated deck, likelihood times consequence on a scale of 1 to 25 (Free Safety Report's example scores)
Job step	Before controls	Band before	After controls	Band after
Fly beam cages to the deck	15	High	5	Moderate
Set cages in beam forms at the slab edge	15	High	5	Moderate
Carry and spread slab bars	12	High	6	Moderate
Tie mat intersections	8	Moderate	4	Low
Work near column dowels	10	High	3	Low
Walk on the finished mat	8	Moderate	4	Low

Source: freesafetyreport.com

Five measures from JHA records

Each measure below needs only the JHA records and the daily log for the same days.

JHA coverage. JHAs submitted divided by crew tasks started, with the count of crew tasks taken from the daily log. A task that starts without a JHA lowers the rate.
Worker participation. Crew signatures on JHAs divided by the workers the daily log puts on those crews. It turns OSHA’s suggested count of workers involved in JHAs into a rate.
Steps still High after controls. The count of job steps on signed JHAs whose residual score is 10 or more. Under Free Safety Report’s bands this count should be zero, because a High step does not start.
High steps before controls, by task type. OSHA’s JHA booklet, Publication 3071, gives priority to jobs with the highest injury rates and to jobs that could cause severe injuries even with no accident history. This share shows which of your tasks those are.
Revisions after work started. OSHA 3071 recommends reviewing a JHA after any injury or illness on that job and training every affected employee when you revise it. Free Safety Report has the crew initial each change, so count revisions that carry no new initials.

A worked example

The figures below are an example with round numbers. A general contractor with self-performing concrete and framing crews tracks JHA coverage and participation across three jobs for six weeks. The superintendents count crew tasks and crew members from the daily logs, and the safety manager counts JHAs and signatures.

Example weekly JHA measures across three jobs (illustrative figures). Coverage and participation are percentages.
Week	Crew tasks	JHAs	Coverage	Crew members	Signatures	Participation	Steps still High
1	40	28	70.0%	180	117	65.0%	2
2	42	31	73.8%	190	133	70.0%	1
3	38	30	78.9%	170	126	74.1%	1
4	45	38	84.4%	200	160	80.0%	0
5	44	39	88.6%	195	166	85.1%	0
6	40	37	92.5%	180	162	90.0%	0
Six weeks	249	203	81.5%	1,115	864	77.5%	4

Over the six weeks the crews started 249 tasks and submitted 203 JHAs, for coverage of 81.5%. Participation was 77.5%, with 864 signatures from 1,115 crew members on those tasks. Both rates rose every week. In the first three weeks, four signed JHAs carried a step that was still High after controls, which under the matrix means work on that step should not have started. The safety manager can review each of those four JHAs with the foreman who signed it.

With JHA responses in one CSV and crew tasks from the daily log in a second sheet, coverage in Excel is a COUNTIFS on each sheet by project and week, with one result divided by the other. A coverage rate above 100% means crews filed JHAs for tasks the daily log missed.

Where the records live

A paper JHA gets counted only when someone types it in. The Free Safety Report builder needs no account, prints a PDF for the crew to sign, and saves the JHA in the browser of the device that made it. The JHA leaves that device only if someone emails the PDF or copies a share link. That works for one crew’s JHA on one day. A weekly count across jobs needs every submission in one place.

ResponseVault, the sponsor of this post, sells software for that step. It turns a paper form into a digital form that crews fill out on a phone or tablet. These claims come from ResponseVault:

Dropdowns pull projects and vendors from Procore, and subcontractors can submit a form from a link without an account.
Each submission can update Procore and email a PDF.
All responses for a form sit in one grid that exports to CSV.
Webhooks fire when a response is created, updated or deleted, and a REST API returns responses with filters for dates.
A project database combines form submissions with data from Procore and other systems for reporting in Excel or Power BI.

ResponseVault says the average time to deployment is four weeks, from an onboarding questionnaire to the form in use on site. The app is listed on the Procore App Marketplace as Job Site Forms by ResponseVault. The listing shows no price and directs buyers to contact ResponseVault.

How to start on your jobs

Pick one task type that scores High before controls, such as deck edge work or roofing, on one active job. For two weeks, have the foreman write a JHA before each crew task, and have the superintendent count crew tasks and crew members from the daily log. At the end of each week, compute coverage and participation, and list every signed JHA with a step still scoring 10 or more after controls. Report those figures next to your recordable injury rate at the monthly safety meeting.

How one contractor uses NYC Department of Buildings(DOB) permit requirements to drive inspections in the field with Procore

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:28:43 +0000

On your job site, especially if you’re in New York City, you’ll need to ensure your team complies with all of the requirements listed in each trade’s work permit. But, getting the status of any given permit on a job is a cumbersome process, and keeping track of what’s left to address is even more challenging. It takes a highly diligent superintendent or project manager to stay on top of the requirements at any point in the job and communicate them to the field.

Below is how an NYC contractor used data integration to save several hours per week of coordination and data-entry.

Challenge

The contractor was looking to reduce the amount of data entry required each week to pull updated permit status and required inspection items, and then relay that data to the field. Before this solution came online, their process was:

Check the NYC DOB NOW website for permit status and required items.
Create a new inspection template for each project in Procore and add the required items for each permit as sections.
Communicate with the field to complete the inspection.
And, if any of the required items changed…repeat the process.

Solution

The contractor worked with data engineering firm, ResponseVault, to create both the integrations between the NYC DOB NOW website, and Procore Inspections, but also to create a management screen for every project.

The integration loads the database of permit information from the DOB into a data warehouse, then lets the contractor’s team choose which permits they want to track per project. When it’s ready, it will trigger an inspection to be created for the project in Procore, including each permit and a line item for each open requirement for the field to respond to.

How does this work?

First, the integration team uses the NYC Open Data Portal to periodically extract and load permit data from the DOB into a PostgreSQL data warehouse. This process happens each day, as the dataset is updated daily. The data has two columns (fields) that contain the information we’re looking for in each permit. They are Special Inspection Requirement and Progress Inspection Requirements. The data in those columns is a comma-separated list of requirements for the permit to move forward. A typical value may look like “Fire-Resistant Penetrations and Joints, High-Pressure Fuel-Gas Piping (Welding).”

ResponseVault takes the data in its raw form, transforms each requirement into a separate record, and presents the contractor’s team with a management interface that includes the project information, a list of each of the permits relevant to that project, and a list of all requirements for each permit.

As the job is in progress, the contractor’s staff in the office can trigger a workflow that creates a customized Procore inspection with sections for each permit and the requirements as entries. The inspection is unique to the project and generated through an automated process that leverages the information in the data warehouse.

The inspection with up-to-date permit data from the data warehouse and attachments uploaded by office staff is now ready to be completed by the field. With this integration, the contractor can reduce data entry and communication time with the field by 60% weekly.

If you’re looking to integrate permit information or other project data with your project management system, contact the ResponseVault team.

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