An FLHA is a five-minute conversation with a record. Here is what the record needs.

Assess before work starts. Involve the workers. Write it down. Control what you found.

Part 2 of the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Code covers hazard assessment, elimination and control. In plain terms it asks four things of an employer: assess the work site for existing and potential hazards before work begins and again when things change; involve the affected workers in that assessment and tell them what it found; record the assessment in writing, dated; and then eliminate the hazards you can and control the ones you cannot, in that order.

The field level hazard assessment, the FLHA, is how most Alberta crews meet all four at once. It is not a legal term. It is the form that carries the daily conversation between the supervisor and the crew about what could hurt someone today, and the proof that the conversation happened.

Seven things, in this order.

1. 01

   The date, the site and the task

   Where exactly, which job, what the crew is about to do. A site name a stranger could find. If the crew moves to a second site or a second task, that is a second FLHA.

2. 02

   Today's conditions

   Weather, ground, light, wind, temperature, who else is working nearby, what equipment is on site. These are the lines that make the form true for today rather than true for every day.

3. 03

   The hazards, specific to the task

   “Slips, trips and falls” is a category. “Ice on the north stairs to the lay-down yard” is a hazard. Name the thing a worker would recognize when they see it.

4. 04

   A control for each hazard, in the right order

   The Code's order is: eliminate the hazard, then engineering controls, then administrative controls, then personal protective equipment. A form where every control is PPE is a form where nobody tried the first three.

5. 05

   Who is on the crew, and their sign-on

   Every worker doing the task signs on after the hazards and controls have been gone through with them. Late arrivals sign on when they arrive, not at the end of the day.

6. 06

   The permits, tickets and equipment the task depends on

   Hot work permit, ground disturbance clearance, fall protection plan, the tickets the workers need to hold. If the task needs one, the FLHA says which and confirms it is in hand.

7. 07

   A second look when conditions change

   The weather turns, another trade arrives, the ground gives way. The Code's “reasonably practicable intervals” means the form gets reopened, not the day's first form treated as permanent.

Documents, interviews, observation. The FLHA shows up in all three.

A COR audit checks a safety program three ways: by reading its documents, by interviewing workers and supervisors, and by watching work happen. The FLHA is the one record that appears in all three. The auditor reads a sample of forms for the things above. They ask a worker what today's hazards were and whether they helped identify them. They stand at the work and check whether the controls on the form are the controls in front of them.

The gap between a program that passes and one that struggles is rarely the form template. It is whether the forms describe today, whether the crew could repeat what is on them, and whether the office can find last March's.

A conversation, then a record. Not a record instead of a conversation.

Everything the supervisor said belongs on the form, in the crew's words. The point of a phone in the supervisor's hand is that the form gets written while they are saying it, not reconstructed at lunch.

The form on the phone, with no signal, in the journal by the time the truck is back.

Rate's FLHA is the form above: site from a list the company keeps, the day's conditions, hazards and controls in the Code's order, crew sign-on by a signature drawn on the screen, and the tickets the task depends on checked against the roster as it is filled. It saves on the device first and syncs when there are bars. The office sees it in the journal, searches it by site or by worker, and can produce last March's in the time it takes to type “March”.

Rate Automation is not a safety consultant and not a law firm. The template helps a crew meet the Code; whether a specific assessment is adequate for a specific task is the employer's call, checked by their certifying partner and, where it matters, qualified Alberta counsel.