A JSA breaks a job into steps, spots the hazards in each one, and sets the controls before work starts. Here is how they work on NZ sites, and how to keep yours somewhere your crew can actually find them.
JSA stands for job safety analysis. Some sites call it a JSEA (job safety and environment analysis), a task analysis, or borrow the Australian term SWMS. The name changes, the idea does not: break the task into steps, identify what could hurt someone at each step, and agree the controls before anyone picks up a tool.
A good JSA is short and specific. For each step of the job it answers three questions: what are we doing, what could go wrong, and what are we doing about it. The crew doing the work should be involved in writing it, because they are the ones who know how the job actually goes, and everyone doing the task signs on to it before starting.
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, a PCBU must identify hazards and manage risks so far as is reasonably practicable, and must engage workers in health and safety decisions. A JSA is not named in the Act, but it is one of the most widely accepted ways of showing you did exactly that: the hazards were identified, controls were agreed, and the people doing the work were part of it.
Where JSAs fall over is not the writing, it is the filing. They end up in a folder in the site office or on someone's laptop, and the crew on the tools has never seen them. That is the problem a JSA library solves.
Break the job into its actual sequence of steps, not one vague line for the whole task. Five to ten steps is typical for most jobs.
For each step, ask what could realistically hurt someone: falls, plant, energy sources, traffic, weather, other crews working nearby.
Set a control for every hazard, starting as high up the hierarchy of controls as practicable, and have everyone doing the job sign on to it.
SiteKey keeps your JSAs in one library attached to your sites, so the analysis you wrote actually reaches the people doing the work.
SiteKey starts from $30/month as a flat rate. There are no per-user fees and no per-scan costs, so the price does not climb every time you take on another crew. The JSA library is part of SiteKey site access management, not a paid add-on. See full pricing on the SiteKey homepage.
JSA stands for job safety analysis. It is a short, structured document that breaks a specific job into steps, identifies the hazards at each step, and records the controls that will be used to manage them. You may also hear JSEA (job safety and environment analysis), task analysis, or the Australian term SWMS (safe work method statement); on most NZ sites these all describe much the same thing.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 does not name JSAs specifically. What it requires is that a PCBU identifies hazards, manages risks so far as is reasonably practicable, and engages workers in health and safety matters. A JSA is one of the most widely used and widely accepted ways of demonstrating those duties for a specific task, and many principal contractors and clients require them before high-risk work starts.
A SWMS (safe work method statement) is an Australian term with a defined legal role for high-risk construction work under Australian regulations. In New Zealand there is no equivalent legal definition, so the JSA, JSEA and task analysis are used more flexibly. In practice both documents do the same job: steps, hazards, controls, and sign-on by the crew.
The people doing the work, with their supervisor. A JSA written by someone in an office who has never done the task tends to miss how the job actually happens on the ground. Involving the crew is also how you meet the worker engagement duty in the Health and Safety at Work Act, and it is why every JSA should end with the crew signing on before work starts.
SiteKey includes a JSA library as part of its site access management platform. Your JSAs live in one place, attached to the sites and tasks they cover. Workers see the relevant JSAs when they sign in to site on their phone and acknowledge them, giving you a time-stamped record. Pricing is a flat rate from $30 a month per site, with no per-user charges.
Tell us about your site and we will show you the JSA library, sign in, and compliance checks working together.
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