JSA or Task Analysis: what is the difference?

A Job Safety Analysis and a Task Analysis are the same document. So is a Safe Work Method Statement. Three names, one piece of paper: the task broken into steps, the hazard at each step, and the control that deals with it. The name on the top matters only because the person asking used one of them.

The short answer

There is no legal difference and no structural difference. None of the three is defined in New Zealand legislation, so no definition separates them. If a site asks for a JSA and your document is headed Task Analysis, it answers the request.

Where each name came from

Job Safety Analysis

The oldest of the three. It comes out of mid-century American industrial safety practice, where the method was to break a job into steps, identify the hazard in each, and work out a safer way to do it. The term travelled with heavy industry and is still common in mining, oil and gas, manufacturing and parts of civil work. You will also see Job Hazard Analysis, which is the same thing again.

Safe Work Method Statement

Australian, and the only one of the three with a statutory meaning anywhere. The Australian model Work Health and Safety Regulations require one before high risk construction work starts. New Zealand drew on the same model law for the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 but did not adopt that requirement, so here the term is industry usage rather than law.

Task Analysis

The term New Zealand construction has mostly settled on, and the one you will see in Site Safe material and in main contractor paperwork. It is the default here for the same reason the others are defaults elsewhere: enough people used it that it became the word.

Is a JSA less detailed than a Task Analysis?

Sometimes, in practice, but not by definition. A JSA is occasionally used to mean a short on-the-spot assessment filled in at the work face, with a fuller document held in the office. Where a site works that way, the distinction is local practice and the site will tell you what it expects in each. It is not a difference in what the words mean.

If a request is ambiguous, ask what they want to see on it rather than which word they used. The answer is always a list of content, and the content is the same in all three.

What all three must contain

• The task, in the steps it is actually done in.
• The hazard at each step and the harm it could cause.
• The risk before controls, the controls, and the risk once they are in place.
• Who is responsible for each control, and the competence or licence the work requires.
• Plant, equipment and PPE.
• Emergency arrangements, including rescue where the task needs it.
• The crew sign-on, taken after the briefing and before the work.

That list comes from what the duty requires rather than from any of the three names, which is why it does not change between them.

Which should you use?

Use the word the site uses. If nobody has specified, Task Analysis is the safer default in New Zealand because it is the term most main contractors and prequalification schemes here write into their own paperwork. Every document sold here carries both the Task Analysis and the Safe Work Method Statement heading in the same download, so the choice is made at the point the request arrives rather than at the point of purchase.

A different question is whether you have been asked for the task document at all, or for the site plan that holds them. That one is worth getting right, and it is covered in which document do you need.

Sources

• Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, s36 (primary duty of care)
• Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016, regs 5 to 8
• Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Australia), Part 6.3, safe work method statements for high risk construction work
• WorkSafe New Zealand, Identifying, assessing and managing work risks

This guide is general information about New Zealand health and safety law as at the review date. It is not legal advice and it does not describe your site. Confirm what applies to you with WorkSafe New Zealand or your adviser.