Free Plumbing Job Hazard Analysis Template (JHA / JSA)

A JSA and a JHA are the same thing — OSHA calls it a job hazard analysis in OSHA 3071, and the field mostly says job safety analysis. Neither is a risk assessment. A risk assessment scores each hazard likelihood × severity on a matrix and produces a register, written once per project; there is no job sequence in it. A JSA breaks one specific job into the steps the crew will perform in order and analyses each step on its own. For plumbing that difference decides whether the document is useful: "trench collapse" as a register row tells you nothing, but "step 4 — enter the trench to cut the lateral" is the step where the protective system either exists or does not, and step 3 is where the spoil pile got put too close to the edge. The register cannot see the ordering. That is the whole point of the JSA.

Five feet. 29 CFR 1926.652(a)(1) requires every employee in an excavation to be protected from cave-ins by an adequate protective system, with two exceptions — excavations entirely in stable rock, and excavations under 5 feet where a competent person's examination shows no indication of a potential cave-in. That second exception is not "under five feet is fine"; it requires an actual examination, and the competent person can decide a four-foot trench needs protection. Three other numbers travel with it and get left off most JSA forms: a stairway, ladder or ramp within 25 feet of lateral travel once the trench is 4 feet deep (1926.651(c)(2)); excavated material and equipment kept at least 2 feet back from the edge or held by a retaining device (1926.651(j)(2)); and atmospheric testing before entry in excavations more than four feet deep wherever a hazardous atmosphere could reasonably be expected (1926.651(g)(1)(i)), which on sewer work it always can.

No, and this form says so rather than implying otherwise. 29 CFR 1926 Subpart P contains no excavation permit. What it requires is a protective system at depth (1926.652(a)(1)), utility location before digging (1926.651(b)), and inspection by a competent person daily and after rain (1926.651(k)(1)). The permits that do exist on a dig come from elsewhere — the one-call locate ticket, and whatever dig permit the utility owner, municipality or general contractor imposes. This builder still gates sign-off on that reference, because a trench JSA with no locate ticket recorded is missing the control that prevents the most common serious incident. It just does not pretend the requirement comes from OSHA.

Enough that each step is one distinct action with its own hazards, few enough that the crew actually reads it. OSHA 3071 sets no number; it warns against a breakdown so detailed it becomes unusable and one so general that hazards hide inside a step. The practical test: if a step needs more than one control answer, it is really two steps. This form caps at twelve, which is an application limit rather than anything from a standard. Most service and repair jobs land between four and eight.

In practice, very close to always. A manhole is large enough to enter, has limited means of entry and exit, and is not designed for continuous occupancy, so it is a confined space. It becomes permit-required once it contains or could contain a hazardous atmosphere, has engulfment potential, or holds any other recognised serious hazard — and a sewer usually has at least the first two. An atmosphere below 19.5 percent oxygen is oxygen-deficient under 29 CFR 1910.134(b). Which standard applies follows the work: 1910.146 for service and maintenance, 29 CFR 1926 Subpart AA (1926.1200–1926.1213) for construction. Subpart AA is stricter on multi-employer sites — competent-person identification of the spaces, continuous atmospheric monitoring where possible, and permits that can be suspended rather than cancelled.

It depends which standard covers the work, and the two genuinely differ. General industry (29 CFR 1910.252(a)(2)(iii)(B)) requires the fire watch to be maintained at least a half hour after the operation, to catch smouldering fires. The construction rule (1926.352(e)) requires personnel to guard against fire "for a sufficient period of time after completion of the work" and puts no number on it at all. So thirty minutes is the stated minimum in general industry and the defensible floor in construction. The trigger is the same on both sides: appreciable combustible material closer than 35 feet to the point of operation, with suitable extinguishing equipment immediately available.

No, and every export states it. This is a template the employer must adapt to the actual job, the actual site and any state plan that applies, and must train the crew on. A completed analysis records that the analysis was done. It does not replace your written safety program, your permit-required confined space program, your energy control procedures or any permit system — and where the analysis triggers a permit, that permit is a separate document which must be issued before work starts. The citations are there to explain why a hazard is in the library, not to certify anything.