Understanding Job Safety Analysis (JSA) for Oil and Gas

Job safety analysis (JSA) is one of the most important safety tools in your arsenal. It’s not just another checklist – it’s a tool to help you keep your workers safe.

And in high-risk industries like oil and gas, it’s easy to understand why JSAs are so important for your company’s success.

Here’s what you need to know about JSA for oil and gas, including what it is, how to do it, and how it benefits your company.

What Is Job Safety Analysis for Oil and Gas?

Job safety analysis, or JSA, is a systematic process designed to keep your employees and workplace safe. It breaks down each job into training sequences, identifies key safety risks, and teaches the employee how to avoid those hazards. It breaks a job down into individual steps and then finds the safest way for an employee to complete each step.

The Process

The JSA process can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Selecting the job to be analyzed
2. Breaking down the job into a sequence of steps required to complete it
3. Identifying potential hazards in each step
4. Developing preventative measures to overcome these hazards

Let’s take a closer look at what happens in JSA.

Job Selection and Task Breakdown

The first step is selecting the job to be analyzed. Every individual job in your company should receive a JSA, but there are some jobs that are higher on the priority list than others.

High-priority jobs include those at high risk of accidents, brand new jobs, jobs that have few (but severe) accidents, jobs whose procedures have recently changed, non-routine or periodic jobs, and jobs where catastrophic accidents could reasonably occur but haven’t happened yet.

Basically, you’re looking for jobs that pose the most risk for your employees. The more dangerous the job, the more urgently it requires a JSA. Once you’ve selected an individual job, break that job down into individual tasks. The goal is to be specific and realistic – break it into the tasks that an employee would actually do in an ordinary day in order to complete this job. Make a spreadsheet or use JSA software and be systematic about it.

Identifying Hazards

Once you’ve broken a job into tasks, you have to identify potential hazards associated with individual tasks. Note that you’re not looking for ways your workers could create a hazard. You’re not looking for random accidents either. You’re looking for potential areas of risk.

For example, worn-out tools are an easy risk area. Slipping or falling hazards are also incredibly common, as is poor lighting and extreme noise, temperatures, or vibrations.

The goal of identifying these hazards is figuring out where you can fix them. You’re also looking for ways that your employees could complete the job more safely to avoid these hazards. From there, you can train your employees in the proper safety procedures so that they can reasonably avoid the risks you’ve identified.

Benefits of JSA for Oil and Gas Professionals

As you can imagine, regular JSAs have a number of benefits for oil and gas professionals, especially when paired with other safety procedures and safety software.

First and foremost, regular JSAs ensure safe and consistent work methods. They act as a checklist which your employees can use to make sure they’re doing a job correctly. They also help reduce injuries by teaching employees how to complete tasks safely all while staying in line with OSHA safety requirements for oil and gas providers - from E&P to petroleum testing companies.

Keeping Your Oil and Gas Workers Safe Every Day

JSA for oil and gas focuses on one important goal: keeping your employees safe. And if you know your way around petroleum safety requirements, you know that it’s just one part of a complete safety program.

If you need help filling in the blanks, EHS Insight can help. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help create a safer workplace.

Featured Resources:

• Oil and Gas Safety: How to Perform Better Audits and Inspections
• Improving EHS Functions in Oil & Gas
• The Most Common EHS Mistakes That Sabotage Your Oil and Gas Operations