Field Level Hazard Assessment (FLHA): A Field Guide

Before a crew starts a task, someone has to stop and ask a plain question: what could hurt us here, today? A field level hazard assessment form is how that question gets asked — and answered — in writing. Whether your company calls it an FLHA, an FLRA, or just the hazard card, it is the last check between the plan and the work: completed at the workface, by the people doing the task, minutes before the task begins.

This guide covers how FLHAs actually work on Canadian job sites: what the form is (and is not), when to complete one, how to fill it out so it means something, the mistakes that turn it into a five-second ritual, and how to get the records working for your supervisors and your joint health and safety committee instead of sitting in a binder.

What is a field level hazard assessment?

A field level hazard assessment (FLHA) is a short, task-specific hazard check completed by workers at the exact location where the work will happen, immediately before it starts. It asks four things: What are we about to do? What could go wrong? How bad would it be? And what are we doing about it before we start?

In some provinces and companies the same document is called a field level risk assessment (FLRA). The terms are interchangeable — the "risk" versions usually add a simple severity-and-likelihood rating, but the practice is the same. The FLHA grew up in Western Canada's energy sector and is now standard across construction, utilities, mining, and industrial maintenance from British Columbia to the Atlantic provinces.

FLHA vs. JHA, JSA, and AST

An FLHA is not a job hazard analysis. A JHA (or JSA — job safety analysis; Québec crews often know the pre-job version as an AST, analyse sécuritaire de tâches) is built in advance, usually in the office: it breaks a recurring task into steps and documents the standard hazards and controls for that task wherever it is performed. The FLHA is the field-level complement. It takes today's reality — this crew, this weather, this scaffold, the other trade working overhead — and checks the plan against it. If the JHA is the recipe, the FLHA is the cook checking the actual kitchen.

Canadian OHS law backs this up. Every province and territory puts a general duty on employers to identify and control hazards before work begins, and some are explicit about writing it down — Alberta's OHS Code, for example, requires hazard assessments to be documented and repeated when the work or the site changes. No Canadian regulation names the "FLHA" specifically, but a signed, dated FLHA is one of the most widely accepted ways to show that duty was met at the task level.

When to complete an FLHA

The short answer: before the task, and again whenever anything changes. In practice, crews complete an FLHA:

• At the start of every shift or new task, before tools come out
• When the task changes — a different method, a different tool, a step nobody planned for
• When conditions change — weather turns, another trade moves in overhead, the excavation is deeper than expected, the light drops
• After any interruption — a stoppage, an incident nearby, a break long enough that the work area needs a fresh look
• When new workers join the task mid-shift — they review the form and sign on before starting

How many forms per day is a company-policy question — most contractors run one per crew per task, refreshed when the trigger events above happen. The principle that should not bend: the assessment is done at the work location, by the people doing the work, before the work starts. An FLHA filled out in the truck at 6:45 a.m. for a task that starts at 10 is fiction with a signature.

How to complete a field level hazard assessment form, step by step

Most forms fit on one page and take five to ten minutes when done honestly. Here is the sequence that makes those minutes count.

1. Walk the work area first

Put the form down and look. Overhead: powerlines, suspended loads, other trades. At grade: ground conditions, access and egress, mobile equipment routes. Below: excavations, penetrations, buried services. The single biggest FLHA failure is writing it from memory instead of from the ground you are standing on.

2. Break the task into steps

Three to six steps is usually enough — set-up, execution, clean-up, with the risky middle broken out. If the task has a JHA or a safe work practice, use its steps as the starting point and adjust for today.

3. Identify the hazards at each step

Work through the energy sources: gravity (falls, dropped objects), motion (vehicles, machinery, line of fire), mechanical, electrical, pressure, chemical, temperature, noise, and biological. Then add the human side: fatigue, new workers, a rushed schedule, and the behaviour patterns that creep in when a task starts to feel routine. Include the hazards you create for other crews — and the ones they create for you.

4. Rate the risk

If your form includes a risk matrix, use it for what it is for: deciding what gets dealt with first, and what is serious enough to stop the task and escalate. A simple low-medium-high rating judged honestly beats a five-by-five matrix nobody understands.

5. Apply controls — in the right order

Follow the hierarchy of controls. Can the hazard be eliminated (do the work at ground level instead of at height)? Substituted? Controlled with engineering — guardrails, barriers, ventilation? Only then lean on administrative controls (signage, spotters, exclusion zones) and PPE. A control column full of "wear gloves" and "be careful" is a sign the form is being filled, not used.

6. Talk it through and sign on

The FLHA is a conversation with a record attached, not a solo writing exercise. The crew reviews the hazards and controls together, anyone can add what is missing, and everyone signs. That acknowledgement matters: it is what turns the form into evidence that every worker on the task knew the hazards and the plan. Anyone who joins the task later reviews the form and signs before they start.

7. Reassess when the day changes

Weather, scope, equipment, adjacent work — when they change, the crew pauses, updates the form, and re-signs. Good forms leave space for this. Good supervisors expect it.

Common FLHA mistakes (and how to fix them)

Each of these turns a field level hazard assessment form from a control into a liability. The usual suspects:

• Pencil-whipping. The same three hazards appear every day in identical handwriting. Fix: supervisors spot-check forms against the actual work area and coach on the spot — the goal is a better look at the work, not neater paperwork.
• Filled out away from the work. The form is completed in the truck, the trailer, or the lunchroom. Fix: make the walk-around the mandatory first step, and make it visible — leaders who do it themselves set the standard.
• Generic hazards, orphan controls. "Slips, trips and falls" with no location and no control tied to a task step protects nobody. Fix: every hazard names a step, and every control names an action someone can verify.
• PPE as the only answer. If PPE is the first and last control on the page, the hierarchy has been skipped. Fix: require one honest elimination-or-engineering question per significant hazard before PPE gets written down.
• Missing sign-ons. A labourer joins at 10:30 and never sees the form. Fix: late-arrival rows on the form, and a crew habit that nobody starts work without reviewing it.
• Write-only records. Forms go from clipboard to box to nowhere; nobody trends the hazards and the committee never sees them. Fix: review and trend them — which is where the next two sections come in.

What a good field level risk assessment template contains

You do not need a twelve-page template; you need one honest page. Whether you build your own or adapt a client's, a field level risk assessment template should include:

• Header: date, time, project and site, exact work location, crew, supervisor, and the task described in plain words
• Permit and reference links: hot work, confined space, excavation, energized electrical — plus the JHA or safe work practice the task follows
• Task steps with hazards, risk ratings, and controls side by side — the row structure is what forces hazards to connect to actions
• A hazard prompt list (overhead work, mobile equipment, weather, adjacent trades, energy sources) to jog memory without replacing the walk-around
• PPE beyond site minimums, tied to specific hazards
• Crew sign-on with printed name and signature — plus rows and times for workers who join later
• A reassessment section for mid-shift changes, with re-sign-on
• A supervisor review sign-off, so every form gets a second set of eyes the same day

One caution: the template is scaffolding, not the assessment. The moment crews can complete it without looking up from the page, it is overdue for a redesign — which is one of the stronger arguments for going digital, below.

How FLHAs feed your JHSC meetings

In Ontario, most workplaces with 20 or more regularly employed workers must have a joint health and safety committee under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, and that committee has to meet on a regular schedule. Other provinces have parallel committee or representative requirements. Wherever you operate, the committee's job is to identify hazards and recommend fixes — and a season's worth of completed FLHAs is exactly the field evidence that job needs.

Completed FLHAs tell the committee which hazards keep recurring, which controls crews actually rely on, and where the same risk is being re-discovered every morning instead of engineered out once. A hazard that shows up on FLHAs from three different crews is not a field problem; it is a program problem — and that is JHSC territory.

Add FLHA trends to your JHSC meeting minutes template

The simplest way to make this routine is a standing agenda item. Give your JHSC meeting minutes template a permanent section for field hazard trends: the most frequent hazards from the period's FLHAs, any control that failed or had to be escalated, and the recommendations that follow — each with an owner and a due date. Minutes structured this way do double duty: they close the loop for the crews who flagged the hazards, and they create a record showing the committee acted on what the field reported.

Going digital: what to look for in an FLRA app

Paper FLHAs have a physics problem. They live in trucks and site trailers, they get filled out cold and wet, half the handwriting is unreadable, and turning a month of them into a trend takes an evening nobody has. By the time a paper field level hazard assessment form reaches anyone who could act on the pattern, the pattern is history.

A good FLRA app fixes the mechanics without softening the discipline. Worth looking for:

• Prefilled context — site, crew, weather, and equipment flow in automatically, so crews spend their minutes on hazards, not headers
• Branching questions that expand only when relevant, keeping the form short for simple tasks and thorough for risky ones
• Photo and voice capture, because a picture of the actual excavation beats a scribbled note
• Enforced sign-on with timestamps, including workers who join mid-task
• Searchable records, so supervisors, the JHSC, and a COR auditor can find any form — and its trends — in seconds

That is the approach behind SALUS digital forms: FLHAs and FLRAs that prefill site context, branch with the work, capture photos and voice, and land in a searchable record the moment the crew signs — no clipboard, no re-keying, no lost carbon copies.

Download the free FLHA template

Use this fillable, two-page field level hazard assessment with your crew. It covers task conditions, hazards and controls, emergency readiness, change reassessment, crew acknowledgement, and closeout.