Completing a job hazard analysis is a requirement before entering any worksite. Casey McGuire looks at a tool under development aiming to automate the process.

Flash forward to 2030, a tradie is on the site and working on a job hazard analysis (JHA). A builder arrives on site, they start to gather materials ready for the day ahead, sips on a hot cup of coffee before walking outside in the cold or heat about to get their hands dirty.

It used to be dangerous and frankly a bit dumb not to begin a job without undertaking a thorough JHA. With a new tool possibly just around the corner for the building and construction industry, the entire hazard analysis can be automated. This will help trade professionals get their job done quicker.

Currently, the contractor must fill out a JHA form noting the task and associated hazards and assess the risk of those hazards considering the working environment, weather conditions and recommended control measures based on the risk level. This is a manual job prior to starting anything on the worksite that can be a dread for many people as it can be a long and annoying process.

Dr Sonali Pandithwatta and fellow researchers at the University of South Australia (UniSA) created a framework for a tool for tradies to automate their JHA.

The manual nature of doing a JHA and the constant change to the environment of construction sites make it a requirement to complete an analysis before starting the job. The research from UniSA aims to develop an automated approach to support safety personnel during the JHA process.

The JHA involves analysing jobs and external conditions such as human, environmental and management factors. It involves critical thinking skills and leveraging gained knowledge to determine potential hazards, assess their risk levels and take preventative measures.

Tradespeople completing a JHA must rely on their experience, as well as previous JHAs, incident reports and Codes of Practice documents.

“This is a compulsory process that must be undertaken by the construction workers before any construction activity is performed on the site,” Dr Sonali says.

“They must review the activity that they are about to perform by breaking it down into a series of tasks and evaluating each task from the perspective of hazards. This is a compulsory requirement in any construction organisation, ensuring that workers have a good understanding of the hazards they may face during a construction activity.”

Most of the time, when completing a JHA document, workers review a previously completed JHA examine it and attempt to gain knowledge from past tasks.

“We can’t solely rely on a previous JHA document. Even if the activity is the same, environmental conditions, workplace conditions and atmospheric conditions that influence the risk level of hazards could be completely different in the current project,” Dr Sonali says.

“Therefore, workers must undertake a new JHA from the beginning and take these new workplace, atmospheric and environmental factors into account.”

The research team has developed a comprehensive methodology to construct the underlying ontology of the automated tool by adopting six phases of ontology development: specification, knowledge acquisition, conceptualisation, integration, implementation and evaluation.

UniSA conducted this research with the support of the South Australian Water Corporation (SA Water), analysing various JHA documents and interviewing multiple supervisors and safety experts in the field. Through this, the research group gained a deeper understanding of how hazards are identified, risks are evaluated and control measures are selected. This resulted in a detailed list of concepts and associations that need to be embedded in the underlying ontology.

“The research was supported by the SA Water maintenance unit. They provided all the necessary resources, information and contact details of key personnel. I would like to take this moment to acknowledge and thank them for their continuous support.” Dr. Sonali concludes.

The research team at UniSA has set ambitious goals and aims to implement the future tool in industries beyond construction.

“They gave me a lot of contacts to get the data that is required for my research. I want to remind them and I want to thank them at this stage for the support they have given to me.”

The researchers also analysed the Incident Database, so they developed a platform to reflect the database into an automated JHA platform. This means the automated JHA platform is updated with the Incident Database so the tradies will have updated knowledge on the construction hazards.

The knowledge acquisition was conducted in two stages. Stage one was a document analysis to identify hazardous activities, hazards and control measures. There were 115 JHA documents collected from water infrastructure contractors.

Stage two was a Delphi study, a communication technique that uses anonymous questionnaires to find a consensus answer, to find an effective approach for getting subject-matter experts to agree on a specific topic, this topic being the construction hazard analysis.

Incidents were recorded into a database that included near misses, injuries or accidents that were experienced by workers while they were on the worksite. The reports described information about the incident, such as the job being done by the worker when the incident occurred, losses, weather conditions, proximity, atmosphere, nature of the workplace, parties involved and the incident’s severity level.

UniSA had one of the supervisor panel managing directors within the SA Water maintenance unit who had the idea.

“He suggested it after saying that the time-consuming nature of JHA is a huge burden for them because they must take time to conduct the activity, as well as considering the importance of JHA,” Dr Sonali says.

“The SA Water team wanted to see not a fully automated tool, but a tool that can support the JHA process so the workers can use that in the field.”

UniSA know this can’t be an activity that can be fully automated as the final document must be signed by the supervisor of the field.

“We have not yet developed the final tool using the underlying ontology, which has been validated by several safety experts in the industry. Once the tool is developed, we aim to apply it to other industries as well. We are currently in the development phase and hope to complete it by mid-2026.” Dr Sonali says.

Once the tool has been developed, the research team hopes to provide access to contractors and offer full support for them to use the tool.

That world where tradespeople can streamline the JHA process is a lot closer to reality than many might think. Gone (soon) will be the days of inefficient and manual processes.