NU-SAF-103 — JSA & PRE-TASK PLANNING

Tier 2/3/4 — Procedure + Field Card + JSA Record Standard · Rev 0.1 DRAFT · Drafted August 1, 2026 · Owner: Field Supervisor Parent: NU-SAF-100 §5 element 4. The form already exists. NU-FLD-200 (Field Recipe Book, Rev 1.3) Ch. 1 (General Laborer) and Ch. 6 (Crew Lead) carry the JSA sheet and the crew ritual, and crews use it today. What has never existed is the procedure — who writes it, where, when it gets re-done, what triggers a new one, and what a good one looks like. That is this document. The form stays; this is the standard behind it.

THE GATE

Every site, every day, before anything breaks ground: the Crew Lead writes the JSA standing in the work area, every man names a hazard out loud, and every man signs. No signature, no work. And when the site changes, the JSA changes with it — same day, same rule.

The signature half of that gate already exists — NU-FLD-200 Ch. 6: every crew member signs the JSA before work starts. The record for this gate is the signed JSA form (§9). A gate that produces no record is a suggestion.

Why it matters: the JSA is the one record almost every other gate in the safety library lands on. The nearest-ER line (NU-SAF-100 §9), the traffic setup (NU-SAF-105), the trench depth and soil call (NU-SAF-107), the glove check and overhead lines (NU-SAF-110), the heat schedule (NU-SAF-112), the spotter's name (NU-SAF-116) — all of them live or die on whether this ten-minute ritual actually happens. Skip the JSA and you didn't skip one document. You skipped six.

1. WHAT A JSA IS — AND WHAT IT IS NOT

A JSA is ten minutes standing in the dirt, before the dirt gets dangerous. The crew looks at this site, today — not sites in general — names what can hurt somebody, and says out loud how each thing is controlled. Then everybody signs, and the signatures mean "I heard it and I'm working to it."

A JSA is not the toolbox talk. The toolbox talk is weekly training on a scheduled topic — the 52-week schedule already exists (the program document is NU-SAF-104 — drafted 8/1/26, pending Adam approval). The JSA is daily and site-specific. A crew that had a great toolbox talk Tuesday still writes a JSA Wednesday morning, because the toolbox talk was about gloves and Wednesday's site has a marked gas line in it.

The honest compliance picture: no OSHA standard requires a form called "JSA" by name. What OSHA does require is that the employer run accident-prevention as a real program with frequent and regular jobsite inspections (29 CFR 1926.20(b)(1)–(2)) and instruct every employee in recognizing and avoiding the unsafe conditions of his work (29 CFR 1926.21(b)(2)). The daily JSA is how a crew of 3–6 with no safety department actually does both — and it is the first daily record a client auditor, an insurance underwriter, or an OSHA compliance officer asks to see after an incident. Signed JSAs versus crew-days worked is already a leading indicator NU-SAF-100 §11 says Nova watches.

2. ONE NAME: JSA

The Work Order Ready Gate says "Safety / JHA brief done & signed by crew." JHA (job hazard analysis) and JSA (job safety analysis) are the same thing — two names for one document, and two names is how a crew ends up thinking there are two requirements, or worse, that checking the JHA box is something other than signing the JSA.

Nova's word is JSA. One name, everywhere. The WO form wording gets updated to "JSA brief done & signed by crew" at its next rev — [Adam: approve]. Until then: checking the WO's "Safety / JHA brief" box means exactly one thing — the signed JSA from §9 exists. There is no separate JHA and no separate brief.

3. WHO

• The Crew Lead writes it. Not the office, not the Supervisor by phone, not the newest guy handed a clipboard. The man running the crew owns the hazards the crew works under. This is already his job under NU-SAF-100 §3 — "Runs the JSA before ground break."
• He writes it standing in the work area — after walking the site, looking at the actual road, the actual marks, the actual hole. A JSA written in the truck at the gas station, or at the yard the night before, is a description of a site from memory. Sites don't match memory. That is why the site walk in NU-FLD-200 Ch. 6 comes before the JSA brief, in that order, on purpose.
• The whole crew participates. Every man names at least one hazard and how it is controlled. That ritual already exists — NU-FLD-200 Ch. 6 (Crew Lead): "Run the JSA: every person stands in it, names a hazard out loud, signs... No signature, no work, including yours." This document builds on that standard, because it is the best line in the library. A man who named a hazard out loud watches for that hazard all day. A man who listened to a speech does not.
• New hires name one too. A Day 1–2 man (NU-PPL-405) can name the simplest hazard on site — that's fine, that's the point. Naming hazards is a skill, and the JSA circle is where it gets trained. His trainer helps him find one; nobody skips him because he's new.
• Subcontractors on a Nova work order sign Nova's JSA before they work, same as everybody (NU-SAF-100 §2 — every sub, every site).
• No Crew Lead on site = whoever the Supervisor named to run the crew writes it. If nobody was named to run the crew, the crew has a bigger problem than the JSA — call the Supervisor before anything else happens.

4. WHEN

Every site. Every day. Before work. Not "the first day on this job." A five-day bore gets five JSAs, because Tuesday's site has Tuesday's weather, Tuesday's traffic, and whatever the weekend left in the pit.

The sequence is the one NU-FLD-200 already runs, and it doesn't change:

1. Confirm the work order and scope.
2. Confirm the 811 ticket is live and every utility gave a positive response (NU-FLD-200 ch. 4 owns the locate standard — the JSA doesn't restate it, it confirms it happened).
3. Walk the site. Eyes on traffic, overheads, marks, ground, neighbors, weather.
4. JSA brief, standing in the work area. Every man names a hazard and its control. Crew Lead writes them down.
5. PPE and traffic control check (NU-SAF-105 goes up before anything comes off the truck — cones before tools, NU-SAF-100 §6 rule 3).
6. Everyone signs. Then, and only then, work.

This rides inside the morning huddle the Daily Loop already requires (NU-GOV-004) — it is not a second meeting. On a bore day, the JSA is written before Phase 0 of NU-FLD-220 starts. On any 80°F+ day, the heat line goes on it per NU-SAF-112.

One site = one JSA. Two sites in one day = two JSAs (§5, trigger 6). There is no such thing as a JSA that covers an address the crew wasn't standing at when they wrote it.

5. RE-DO TRIGGERS — WHEN THE MORNING JSA IS DEAD

The morning JSA described the morning site. Any of these means the site the crew is now working is not the site they briefed, and the JSA gets amended or rewritten before work continues:

Amended vs. new: same site, same sheet — write the new hazard lines below the morning's, note the time, everyone signs again next to the amendment. New site — new sheet. Either way the rule is the same: nobody works to a hazard list that no longer matches the ground.

Why it matters: the mid-day trigger is where JSAs actually fail. Crews are good at the morning ritual and bad at stopping a rolling afternoon to amend a piece of paper. But the man who gets hurt at 2 PM is almost never hurt by the hazard the crew briefed at 7 AM — he's hurt by the one that showed up at 1:30.

6. QUALITY STANDARD — A REAL LINE VS. A PENCIL-WHIPPED ONE

A hazard line is real if it names this site's hazard and a control a man can point at from where he's standing. If the line could be photocopied onto any site in Georgia, it is not a JSA line — it is a horoscope.

Three pairs from Nova's actual work. Left column fails the standard; right column passes.

The difference is not length — it's whether the control exists in the physical world. "Be careful" is not a control. A photographed taper, a signed 107-F, a ladder you can see: those are controls.

The Supervisor's spot-check question on the midday Daily Loop touch: pick one line off today's JSA and ask any man on the crew to point at the control. If nobody can point at it, the line was written to fill the box, and that conversation happens today, not at the weekly review.

Hazard scan prompts (what the site walk looks for — prompts, not a copy-paste list): traffic and pedestrians · overhead lines within reach of anything that raises (NU-SAF-110 §6) · marked and unmarked underground utilities · trench, pit, and spoil (NU-SAF-107) · machines, backing, and swing radius — spotter named by name (NU-SAF-116) · heat row and buddy pairs (NU-SAF-112) · vaults and manholes — topside-only question answered (NU-SAF-109 §2) · chemicals in use today: drilling fluid and additives, fuel, hydraulic oil, pipe lube, marking paint, two-cycle mix, solvents (SDS program is NU-SAF-101, not built — until then, the label is the information) · footing, weather, light, neighbors, dogs.

7. THE 15-MINUTE RULE

A right-sized JSA on a normal Nova site takes about 10–15 minutes, walk included. The two edges are both signals:

• Under 5 minutes on a complex site is a flag. A site with a live road, an open excavation, and a marked energized crossing does not brief in four minutes. That JSA was recited, not performed — treat it like a missing one. The Supervisor asks about any suspiciously fast JSA on the midday touch.
• Stuck past 30 minutes = call the Supervisor. If the crew is still arguing hazards and controls at the half-hour, the site has a problem the JSA can't solve — a setup that doesn't fit NU-SAF-105, a dig that needs an answer from NU-SAF-107, a scope that doesn't match the work order. That call is the system working, not the crew failing. Standing around confused for an hour costs more than the call, and working confused costs more than both.

8. NU-SAF-103-C — JSA FIELD CARD (Tier 3 — print, laminate, truck)

EVERY SITE, EVERY DAY, BEFORE WORK (Crew Lead): 1. Work order and 811 ticket confirmed live. No valid locate = no dig. 2. Walk the site. Traffic, overheads, marks, ground, weather, neighbors. 3. Crew in the work area. Every man names one hazard + its control, out loud. Write them down. New guy names one too. 4. Write the required lines (see the form): nearest ER + 911 address + named caller · traffic setup used · heat row on 80°F+ days · depth/soil/protection on any dig · spotter by name if machines work near men · gloves/overheads on a bore day. 5. Everyone signs. No signature, no work. 6. Photo of the signed sheet → filed with today's DFR (WhatsApp per the Daily Loop until the app lands). 7. Cones before tools (NU-SAF-105). Then work.

RE-DO — STOP AND AMEND IF: scope changes · unmarked utility found · weather turns · new man arrives (he signs before he works) · incident or near-miss · second site (new sheet).

PACE CHECK: complex site briefed in under 5 minutes — do it again for real. Stuck past 30 — call the Supervisor.

9. THE RECORD — JSA FORM STANDARD (Tier 4)

The form is the NU-FLD-200 JSA sheet — date / WO # / location / crew lead, the hazard-and-control table, and the crew sign-off. It stays. Since it was printed, five SOPs have added required lines to "the JSA," and this section is now the controlling list of what a complete JSA carries. NU-FLD-200 picks these up as printed fields at its next rev — [Adam: approve] — and until then the Crew Lead writes them into the hazard table like any other line. [Adam: if "Field Crew Daily Playbook" is meant to remain a separate, live, citable source distinct from NU-FLD-200, it must first be added to NU-GOV-000 Part 3 with a Doc ID — this is flagged open, not settled.]

Retention: the signed JSA travels with that day's DFR into the work order folder — one job, one folder, the JSA and the DFR for every day in it. Photo of the signed sheet goes up the same day per the Daily Loop so the record exists even if the paper doesn't survive the truck. When the Softr app lands, the JSA becomes a field on the daily record with the photo attached (per the HANDOFF build spec) — [Adam: confirm with Steve that the daily record carries a JSA photo field; it is the one attachment §1's whole library lands on]. JSAs are kept as long as the work order file is kept — they are the site's safety memory in any dispute, claim, or audit.

Proof & records:

Accountability tie-in (NU-PPL-403) — proposed, pending Adam ratifying into 403: NU-PPL-403 §2 currently rates any skipped or pencil-whipped JSA as Class B (3 pts) as one combined rule. This document proposes REPLACING that single rule with three distinct outcomes: ground broken with no signed JSA = Class C (6 pts) — same weight as working the road with no traffic control, because it is the same gamble. A man working who never signed = Class A (1 pt) on him and on the Crew Lead who let him. A pencil-whipped JSA found at spot-check = Class A (1 pt) on the Crew Lead, and the JSA gets re-done on the spot. Points never attach to stopping work over a JSA — calling the Supervisor at minute 30 is free, always.

DONE WHEN

• Every crew-day has a signed JSA filed with its DFR, findable by work order — and the JSAs-signed vs. crew-days-worked ratio NU-SAF-100 §11 watches runs at 1:1.
• Any man on any crew can answer, at 2 PM, "what hazard did you name this morning?"
• Amendments actually appear on sheets — mid-day triggers producing mid-day signatures, not clean morning-only paperwork on days the weather turned.
• The WO form says "JSA," NU-FLD-200's sheet carries the §9 fields, and there is one name and one form in the whole company.
• The Supervisor's midday spot-check is a habit, and pencil-whip finds are trending to zero.

NEVER

• NEVER break ground without a signed JSA. Not for a one-hour job, not because the crew was here yesterday.
• NEVER sign a JSA you weren't briefed on — and never let a man work who hasn't signed, whatever time he arrived.
• NEVER write the JSA anywhere but the site. The truck at the gas station, the yard, the night before — none of those are the work area.
• NEVER copy yesterday's sheet. Yesterday's site no longer exists.
• NEVER keep working through a §5 trigger on the theory the morning JSA "mostly still applies."
• NEVER write "be careful" as a control. If a man can't point at the control, it isn't one.
• NEVER point a man for calling the Supervisor over a JSA. The 30-minute call is the system working.

10. WHAT THIS DOCUMENT NEEDS FROM ADAM

1. Approve "JSA" as the one name and the WO Ready Gate wording change from "Safety / JHA brief" to "JSA brief" at the form's next rev (§2).
2. Approve the §9 required-fields list as controlling, and the NU-FLD-200 sheet picking up those printed fields at its next rev — so the form matches what five SOPs already require of it.
3. Ratify the proposed point classes in §9 into NU-PPL-403 — this revises the existing Class B (3 pts) "Skipped or pencil-whipped JSA" rule into three separate point values — Adam must approve the change, not just the addition.
4. Flag the Softr JSA field to Steve — the daily record needs a JSA photo attachment field; it is the landing spot for the whole §9 table (per the HANDOFF build spec).
5. On approval, flip the NU-SAF-100 §5 element-4 row from "Form exists, procedure not built" to "NU-SAF-103 issued."

NU-SAF-103 · Rev 0.1 DRAFT · Nova Underground · Parent: NU-SAF-100 · Form layer: NU-FLD-200 JSA sheet · Field card: NU-SAF-103-C · Uncontrolled when printed.