Avoiding workplace accidents: the importance of pre-job safety analyses

Careful, thorough, individual and group pre-job safety analyses completed by knowledgeable and competent individuals can significantly reduce workplace incidents. Benefits include: decreased costs, improved productivity and morale of employees, and an increased perception by those outside of positive safety consciousness. Pre-job safety analyses can be done either by a team of workers or by a solitary worker. In both cases these workers need to be trained in the completion of pre-job safety analyses. Supervisors must check to see that these analyses are completed competently. The current study presents pre-job safety analyses, namely the Neil George Five Point Safety system and a construction field level risk assessment. Workers may be guided by one of these systems to complete a pre-job safety analysis but must also have access to safe work procedures, and equipment and area inspection reports. Examples of accidents that were investigated during the author's 18 years as a Saskatchewan mine inspector will be discussed within the context of the above. The causes of the accidents will be explored with close reference to how pre-job safety analyses could have prevented their occurrence.