JSEA Template — Job Safety and Environmental Analysis

A JSA (job safety analysis) breaks a task into steps and records the hazard and the control at each step. It is a general risk management tool, not a document the WHS Regulations name.

A JSEA is the same analysis with an environmental impact assessed at each step as well: noise, dust, spills, waste, runoff, vegetation, fauna and heritage. Some organisations call the same thing a JHA or a JHEA.

A SWMS (safe work method statement) is the document the WHS Regulations require for the high risk construction work activities listed in section 291. It must identify the work, the hazards, the controls and how the controls are implemented, monitored and reviewed, and it must be available on site while the work is done.

The three are not interchangeable. A JSEA does not satisfy the SWMS duty for high risk construction work, and a SWMS does not usually carry the environmental column a client’s JSEA requirement is asking for. On a task that is both high risk construction work and environmentally sensitive, the practical answer is a SWMS for the regulatory duty and a JSEA, or an environmental section in the SWMS, for the client requirement.

For each step of the task the JSEA records the environmental aspect, the potential impact and the control. The aspects that come up on almost every site are:

• Spills and leaks: fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid, chemicals and concrete washout, with the control being bunding, drip trays, spill kits and a spill response.
• Dust and air emissions: cutting, grinding, excavation and haul roads, controlled by water suppression, covered loads and speed limits.
• Noise and vibration: plant, compaction and demolition near neighbours, controlled by hours of work, equipment selection and monitoring.
• Water and runoff: sediment leaving the site, dewatering discharge and works in or near a waterway, controlled by sediment fencing, settlement, discharge testing and permits.
• Waste: segregation, licensed disposal, asbestos and contaminated soil tracking.
• Vegetation, fauna and heritage: clearing limits, exclusion fencing, pre-clearing surveys and unexpected finds procedures.

The control column should name the measure and the person responsible, exactly as the safety column does. A JSEA whose environmental entries all read "care to be taken" is the environmental equivalent of a SWMS whose controls all read "be careful".

A JSEA requirement usually comes from the client’s own environmental management system: a mine site operating under an environmental authority, a council with a construction environmental management plan, a utility, or a principal contractor on a project with environmental conditions of consent. The requirement is contractual rather than regulatory, which means the client decides the format and the level of detail, and it is worth asking for their template or their minimum content before writing one. Most will accept a JSEA that follows their step, hazard, impact and control layout and that references their site rules for spills, waste and clearing.

The template follows the standard sequence. Describe the task and the location; list the people, plant, materials and permits involved; break the task into steps in the order they happen; for each step record the safety hazard, the environmental aspect, the risk rating before controls, the controls for both, who is responsible and the residual rating; then sign on the workers who will do the task and the supervisor who approved it. Keep the steps to what a worker would recognise as a step, usually eight to fifteen for a typical task; a JSEA with forty steps is not read on site. Review it when the method or the site conditions change and after any incident or environmental near miss.