JHA vs. JSA vs. AHA — Sorting Out the Acronyms

Three letters. Three documents. Mostly the same thing. If you've worked in US construction or general industry for any length of time, you've been asked for at least two of these — sometimes for the same job, by two different people, on the same day. Here's the actual difference.

The short version

• JHA — Job Hazard Analysis. OSHA's preferred term since the 2002 release of OSHA Publication 3071.
• JSA — Job Safety Analysis. Older industry term. Same structure, same purpose, often the same template.
• AHA — Activity Hazard Analysis. Required on US Army Corps of Engineers projects under EM 385-1-1. Includes extra fields the others don't.

If someone asks you for a JSA and you hand them a JHA, no one in the field is going to push back. If someone asks for an AHA on a USACE project and you hand them a JHA, you'll get it back with red ink.

JHA — Job Hazard Analysis

OSHA Publication 3071 ("Job Hazard Analysis") is the reference document. The structure is straightforward:

1. Break the job into steps in sequence
2. Identify the hazards in each step
3. Specify the controls — engineering, administrative, PPE — that reduce the risk
4. Sign off and review

JHA is the term most federal OSHA inspectors use. It's also the term that shows up in modern GC safety manuals and most prequal questionnaires.

JSA — Job Safety Analysis

JSA is the original industry term. It predates the JHA terminology by decades — it goes back to the early industrial safety movement and the work of writers like Heinrich in the 1930s. The format is identical to a JHA. The difference is purely vocabulary.

Why does it persist? Two reasons:

• Older safety programs, training materials, and templates were written when JSA was the universal term
• Some industries (oil and gas, refining, marine) prefer JSA culturally

Practically: if your client uses JSA in their forms and SOPs, use JSA on your document. If they use JHA, use JHA. The content doesn't change.

AHA — Activity Hazard Analysis

AHA is the version required by the US Army Corps of Engineers Safety and Occupational Health Requirements manual, EM 385-1-1 (current edition dated 15 March 2024). Paragraph 01.A.14 requires an AHA for each definable feature of work. If you're a contractor on a federal civil works project — dams, levees, military construction, environmental remediation — you'll be expected to produce AHAs, not JHAs.

The extra fields an AHA requires:

• Training requirements — what training each crew member needs to perform the activity
• Inspection requirements — what tools and equipment must be inspected, and how often
• Competent / qualified person designation — named individuals responsible for oversight
• RAC (Risk Assessment Code) — a numeric severity-probability score, similar to a UK risk matrix

An AHA is essentially a JHA with the training and inspection columns filled in. If you can write one, you can write the other.

Which one should you use?

What about Pre-Task Plans, JSEAs, FLRAs?

Different industries have evolved their own variants:

• Pre-Task Plan (PTP) — daily, task-specific version of a JHA, signed by the crew at the start of shift
• Job Safety and Environmental Analysis (JSEA) — common in oil and gas, adds environmental hazards
• Field Level Risk Assessment (FLRA) — Canadian / cross-border term, daily field document
• Take 5 / SLAM — informal, individual hazard checks before starting a task

These don't replace a JHA — they're typically done in addition to it. The JHA is the planning document. The PTP or FLRA is the daily verification that conditions still match the plan.

Bottom line

If you're not sure which to write, write a JHA. It's the OSHA term, it covers the structure everyone expects, and it's the easiest to defend in an audit. Add the extra AHA fields if and when a federal contract requires them. Relabel as JSA if the client culture demands it.

Build any of them with Riskora

Riskora outputs JHA format by default and supports JSA labeling. The structure, hazard libraries, and OSHA references are the same — only the document title changes. For USACE projects, the platform includes an AHA template variant with the training, inspection, and RAC fields filled in.

Try Riskora free →

For background, see what is a JHA and the JHA generator.