Job Hazard Analysis Template: Draft One per Job Type With AI

Break the job into steps, list what could go wrong at each step, then set controls from strongest to weakest: remove the hazard first, protective equipment last. AI can draft that table in minutes from a plain description of the job, but a competent person must walk the site, correct the draft and sign it before work starts.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Rules on written hazard analyses, and on who counts as competent to sign one, differ by place and by trade, so ask your insurer or a qualified safety adviser what applies to you. What follows is a method for producing a good working document, using one job type as the worked example.

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By competent person I mean someone with the training and experience to spot the hazards in that particular job, and the authority to stop work and fix them. A senior manager who has never done the job does not qualify, and an AI never does.

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The AI draft is useful for one reason: it rarely forgets the ordinary hazards, such as slips, manual handling and dust. It is poor at what only someone on site can know, such as the age of the building, what is behind the wall and who else will be there. Those gaps are exactly what the supervisor's checks below are for.

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A job hazard analysis, and how it differs from the other safety papers

A job hazard analysis looks at one job as a sequence of steps and asks, at each step, what could go wrong and what stops it. The names for the other papers overlap and vary between trades, so check what your insurer and clients call them. In plain terms they do different jobs.

One firm's single document can serve more than one purpose. The point is not the name but that someone has worked through the steps. If you need the neighbouring documents, there are tutorials on drafting risk assessments with AI, writing a method statement and AI-written toolbox talks, each with the same rule that a competent person checks the result.

Which job types to write first

You do not need twenty analyses by Friday. Write the ones where one mistake does most damage first. Common safety guidance puts these at the front: jobs that have already caused the most injuries or ill health, jobs with severe injury potential even if nothing has gone wrong yet, jobs where one simple human error could lead to serious harm, jobs that are new or have recently changed, and jobs complex enough to need written steps. A simple way to rank your own list is likelihood times severity, each scored from one to three.

These scores are my judgement for an imaginary firm; your own incident and near-miss history should reorder them. Start with the top three, and write one analysis a fortnight rather than all at once. Small demolition scores six here and is the example below, because it is a job where a generic draft looks fine and misses the things that matter most.

The table: six columns a crew will actually read

A job hazard analysis lives or dies on whether the crew can read it in two minutes. Six columns are enough: the step, what could go wrong, who could be hurt, the controls in order of strength, who owns the control, and the check before moving to the next step.

Step | What could go wrong (where, trigger, consequence) | Who could be hurt | Controls, strongest first | Owner | Check before the next step
1 |  |  |  |  |
2 |  |  |  |  |
Stop points: [list the findings that stop work, and who to call]
Competent person: [name, role]   Signed: [   ]   Date: [   ]   Version: [   ]

Describe each hazard as a short scenario with a place, a trigger, who or what is exposed and a consequence: "In the partition between kitchen and dining room (place), while cutting a stud close to the socket (trigger), a hidden live cable (exposure) could be struck, causing electric shock (consequence)". That shape forces a specific control, where "electrical hazard" invites "be careful".

Order the controls using the hierarchy of controls, which public safety guidance sets out from most to least effective.

Protective equipment sits last because it works only when it is chosen, fitted and used correctly every time, and safety guidance says not to rely on it alone when better controls are available. A draft whose controls are all "wear PPE" has not done the analysis.

Brief the AI like a new supervisor: the first-draft prompt

The quality of the draft follows the quality of the brief. Give the job in the words you would use to a new supervisor, and set rules that make weak controls impossible. The last paragraph is the important one: it makes the AI hand you the questions you need to answer on site.

You are drafting a job hazard analysis for a small contracting firm. A competent supervisor will review it, so make it easy to challenge.
Job: remove one timber stud partition (about 3 m long) between a kitchen and a dining room in an occupied house built some decades ago. Plasterboard on both sides, one socket on the wall. Two-person crew. Tools: hand tools, a reciprocating saw, a vacuum with a filter for dust. Work from the floor and a stepladder. Waste is carried out through the front door to a van. The client and a dog are at home. One day.
Output a table with columns: step, what could go wrong, who could be hurt, controls (strongest first: eliminate, substitute, engineering, administrative, PPE), owner, check before the next step.
Rules: six to ten steps in the order the work happens. Describe each hazard with where, trigger and consequence. No control may be a phrase like be careful or use appropriate PPE.
After the table list: (a) every assumption you made about the building or site, (b) questions the supervisor must answer on site, (c) any step where work should stop until someone qualified has checked.

Keep client names, addresses and phone numbers out of the prompt, and check the data setting on your plan. A generic description of the job is all the AI needs.

What the AI drafted for removing a stud partition

This is the kind of first draft (illustrative) you can expect, trimmed to its controls. Everything in it is true, and very little of it is useful.

Look at what is missing. There is no step about what is inside the wall, nothing about the age of the materials, no check that the wall is not carrying load, no thought for the client and the dog, no owner for any control and no stop point. The controls are also at the weak end: a dust mask is not engineering control of dust, and "be careful" is not a control at all. The assumptions list at the bottom of the AI's reply is where the useful material is. A typical reply notes that it assumed the wall was non-structural and that no asbestos was present, which are the two facts that most need a person.

Eight checks the supervisor makes before signing

This is the part no draft can do. The supervisor, or whoever is competent for the job type, works through these before the document is signed.

1. Walk the actual site. Look at the wall, the access, the waste route, the floors and the lighting. A plan view hides the stairs.
2. Ask the people doing the work. "Which part of this worries you?" and "What went wrong last time?" are the two best questions in safety, and the crew usually knows the answer.
3. Check what is behind and above. Find drawings or ask the client, scan for cables and pipes on both sides, and look at the floor and ceiling for signs the wall carries load.
4. Check the age and the materials. Depending on when a building was made, plaster, boards, paint or flooring may contain asbestos or lead. If anything is suspect, work stops until a qualified person has tested it.
5. Check who else is there. Occupants, children, pets and other trades all change the plan. Decide who is out of the area and how that is enforced.
6. Check tools and equipment against the van. Condition, guards, leads, the ladder, the filter on the vacuum. The analysis assumes equipment that may not exist.
7. Check the history. Look at near misses and incidents on this job type. Each is evidence that a control did not work.
8. Check that every stop point is real. Each needs a named person with authority and a phone number, and the crew must know they will not be penalised for stopping.

Two of these decide the job. Services and load-bearing walls are the kind of fact an AI can only assume, and the cost of assuming wrongly is high. Both become stop points in the final document, which is what a stop point is for: a finding that ends the job until a specific person has dealt with it.

The finished analysis for the partition job

This is the document after the walk-round (illustrative; yours will differ because your site, your crew and your rules will). Note the changes: steps added for services, materials and structure, controls re-ordered strongest first, an owner for each step and a check before moving on.

Competent person: [name, role]. Signed and dated, version 1. Stop points: unknown pipe or cable (call the supervisor), suspect material (call the supervisor), no written structural confirmation (call the supervisor).

Ask the AI to attack its own draft

Once you have edited, one more AI pass is cheap and often catches a missing step. This time, switch the AI from author to reviewer, and tell it not to rewrite.

Act as an experienced site safety supervisor reviewing this draft job hazard analysis. Do not rewrite it. List: steps that are missing; hazards that are missing at each step; controls that are generic or in the wrong order; anything that depends on facts about the building that are not stated; and anything that should be a stop point. Mark each item MUST FIX or WORTH CONSIDERING, and be specific.

A reply might (illustratively) include: "MUST FIX: no step confirms whether the wall carries load. MUST FIX: the dust control relies on a mask; say what protection is required and who checks the fit. WORTH CONSIDERING: the dog may escape when the front door is open for waste; add a gate or keep the dog in another room." Each item is a question for you, not a verdict. If it is right, add the control. If it is wrong, ignore it. Either way the competent person decides, and that is the whole point of the structure.

Sign-off, crew briefing and where the paper lives

The competent person signs with name, role, date and version number, after the changes are made and not before. If the job includes work that needs a specialist, such as isolating electrics, that specialist signs their part. Check with your insurer what they expect on a signed analysis and how long records must be kept; I cannot tell you from here, and it varies.

Then brief the crew, for five minutes, before work begins. Walk the table, point to each stop point and ask each person to say back what they would do if they found a pipe in the wall. Everyone who will work on the job signs that they were briefed. A briefing the crew can repeat is worth more than a signature on a page.

Keep the master in one folder and a copy in the job record. If your job software supports forms, put the checks there. In Jobber, for example, checklists (on the Connect plan and above) attach to a job or visit and can include signature and photo fields. A question can be marked required, but the crew can still complete the visit with it unfinished, so a stop point still needs a person to enforce it. The near-miss logging tutorial covers capturing the history that feeds your reviews.

One master per job type, one page of site facts per job

The title promises one analysis per job type, which means you maintain a library, not a pile of one-off documents. Keep a master for each job type, written once and reviewed after every incident. For each actual job, add a single page of site facts that answers what is different today.

SITE FACTS (one page, attached to the master)
Job type and master version:
Building age and any known past surveys:
Services found or marked (scan result, circuit isolated by):
Suspect materials: none / tested / STOP
Structure confirmed by: [name] on [date]
Occupants, children, pets, and how they are kept out:
Access, stairs, parking and waste route:
Other trades on site:
Anything different from the master:
Completed by: [name]   Date:

Here is that page filled in for the partition job (illustrative). The last line is the one that earns the page its place: the master never asked what else the socket's circuit supplied, and isolating it would have switched off the client's fridge for the day.

SITE FACTS: partition removal, master v1
Building age and any known past surveys: client estimates about 50 years; no survey on file
Services found or marked: one socket circuit; scan shows a cable rising to the ceiling;
  circuit isolated and proved dead by [electrician] at 8.15
Suspect materials: textured coating on the ceiling at the wall head; sampled and tested
  by a qualified person before work, result on file
Structure confirmed by: [name] on [date], in writing
Occupants, children, pets: client works upstairs; dog kept in the back room, door shut
Access, stairs, parking and waste route: front door, three steps, van on the drive;
  hall sheeted
Other trades on site: none
Anything different from the master: the circuit also feeds the kitchen fridge; client
  told the day before, fridge moved to another circuit before isolation
Completed by: [supervisor]   Date: [date]

This split keeps the master stable and the site page honest. When the site page shows something the master does not cover, such as an unusual access route, the supervisor decides whether to adapt the controls, add a stop point or revise the master. It also gives the AI a smaller job in future: drafting a first version of a master for a new job type, never filling in a site page.

When to stop using the AI draft and get help

Some jobs are beyond a template. Work in confined spaces, excavations of any depth, live electrical work, structural alterations, work over water or at significant height, and anything involving materials that may be hazardous are examples where a competent specialist, your insurer or a qualified safety adviser should lead. Use AI at most to tidy their notes into your table.

Guidance on this subject also says you should involve a professional when your people do many different or complex processes, and that you and your crew must stay involved even then, because you are on site every day. That is the right spirit for the AI draft too: a useful starting point, reviewed by the people who will do the work, signed by someone accountable for it.

If you are building a wider safety file, the tree surgeon risk assessment tutorial shows the same draft, then sign-off pattern for a higher-risk trade, and it is a fair preview of how much the competent person adds as the stakes rise.

Questions small contractors ask about hazard analyses

Is a job hazard analysis the same as a risk assessment?

They overlap, and the names vary by trade and by who is asking. A job hazard analysis works through one job step by step. A risk assessment is often broader, covering a workplace or activity and rating each risk. Check what your insurer and clients call these documents, and make sure the one you write answers the question they are asking.

How many steps should a job hazard analysis have?

Usually six to ten. If you have only three, steps are probably too broad and hazards hide inside them. If you have thirty, nobody will read it on site. A useful test: if a single step has more than three different hazards, split it. Aim for steps a crew member would recognise as the way the job actually unfolds.

Can my crew use AI on their phones to draft one on site?

They can use it to help draft a checklist or a briefing script, but a phone chat cannot replace the walk-round or the sign-off by a competent person. Keep client names and addresses out of any prompt. If something unexpected turns up on site, the answer is to stop and call the supervisor, not to ask a chatbot.

How often should a job hazard analysis be reviewed?

Review it after any injury or near miss on that job type, when the method, tools, materials or site conditions change, and on a fixed schedule you choose, such as once a year. Whenever you revise one, brief the crew on what changed. A document nobody has looked at since it was signed gives false comfort.

Further reads

• How to Write a Health and Safety Policy With AI and What to Check — The policy this analysis hangs from
• AI in Contracting: Subcontractor Paperwork Chasing Checklist — Chase subcontractors for their own paperwork
• Roofing RAMS Template: AI Drafts, a Competent Person Signs It Off — A roofing version of draft, then competent-person sign-off
• Can AI Write RAMS for Electrical Work? Who Must Sign It Off — Who must sign off electrical method statements
• Lone Worker Risk Assessment for Cleaners: Early Starts and Client Sites — Lone working, which a job hazard analysis often needs
• Simpro Form Builder: Draft Job Sheets and Safety Checklists With ChatGPT — Build job-sheet checklists in field-service software
• Demolition Estimate Template: Scope, Waste and Disposal Lines With AI — A demolition estimate template for a rear extension: scope, asbestos and services exclusions, tonnes by waste stream, and skip and disposal lines.
• Party Wall Notice Template: AI Draft Checked Against the 1996 Act — AI can draft a party wall notice in minutes. Here is the clause-by-clause check a surveyor runs before anything is served.
• Can AI Draft a Construction Phase Plan? What You Must Still Check — A worked CDM 2015 example showing the duties AI drafts leave out, and what the principal contractor must confirm before work starts.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: public workplace-safety guidance on job hazard analysis and on the hierarchy of controls, and Jobber's help article on checklists, read in November 2026. The job, hazards and controls in the example are illustrative and are not a substitute for your own analysis. Not legal advice.