Field Level Hazard Assessments: Where Safety and Technology Converge

In high-risk industries (from energy and utilities to property management, healthcare, and land services), Field Level Hazard Assessments (FLHAs) are the backbone of workplace safety. They ensure hazards are identified, assessed, and controlled before work begins. Yet many organizations still rely on outdated, paper-based systems that slow down reporting, limit visibility, and prevent real-time decision-making.

The good news? Technology is changing that. Across North America, digital FLHAs are transforming how companies keep workers safe.

Why FLHAs Still Matter

Despite years of progress in workplace safety, data from 2023 (the most recent year of complete data) confirms that risk remains high:

  • Energy sector: Oil and gas workers continue to face transportation and exposure-related hazards, among the leading causes of workplace fatalities (Energy Safety Canada, 2023).
  • Utilities: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows fatality and injury rates comparable to construction, an industry historically ranked among the most dangerous (BLS, 2023).
  • Property management: Facilities and building-services professionals experience preventable incidents linked to falls, electrical exposure, and equipment misuse (WorkSafeBC, 2023).
  • Healthcare: Nurses and frontline staff continue to record among the highest injury rates across all sectors due to patient handling, slips, and workplace violence (BLS, 2023).
  • Land services and transportation: Alberta data shows some of the highest disabling injury rates caused by overexertion and environmental exposure (Government of Alberta, 2023).

These numbers tell a consistent story: FLHAs remain essential to saving lives, reducing liability, and meeting compliance standards.

Quantifiable ROI: Proof That Digital FLHAs Deliver

Safety leaders often ask: Can safety transformation prove its ROI?

To understand the real-world impact of digitizing FLHA’s, Field Safe analyzed results from a major North American energy-infrastructure organization operating thousands of remote sites. Over the course of one year, this company used Field Safe’s digital FLHA platform to modernize its safety program. The initiative generated detailed data that revealed measurable efficiency gains, cost savings, and stronger compliance performance,  results now reflected across other Field Safe client sites.

Within the first month:

·       7,889 digital FLHAs were completed across field operations.

·       40,000hazards and 65,000 mitigation controls were identified and tracked in real time.

·       80 percent adoption was achieved within the first four weeks, an unprecedented rate for a safety-system rollout.

·       15 minutes saved per submission, which translates into nearly 2,000 hours of reclaimed field time annually.

·       Combined cost avoidance exceeded $375,000 per year, driven by administrative efficiency, reduced incidents, and fewer compliance fines

This wasn’t just a process improvement; it was a cultural shift. Workers moved from checking boxes on paper to actively identifying and managing risks. Supervisors gained immediate visibility into hazards, enabling them to make proactive decisions and take faster corrective action.

How Digital FLHAs Strengthen Safety Performance

Field Safe’s experience across multiple industries shows that digitization delivers value far beyond efficiency. Key innovations are reshaping how organizations approach risk management: 

  • Talk-to-Text & Offline Access: Workers complete assessments easily, even in remote or high-noise environments.
  • Auto-Populated Controls & GPS Validation: Ensures accuracy, consistency, and proof that assessments are completed on-site.
  • Integrated Training & Review Fields: Reinforces learning and accountability between teams and supervisors.
  • Real-Time Dashboards & Analytics: Identify recurring hazards, measure control effectiveness, and visualize trends.

Field Safe’s digital FLHA delivers significant value by making risk data visible, actionable, and measurable. By digitizing hazard assessments, organizations can analyze patterns across sites, crews, and activities to identify recurring issues, high-risk trends, and opportunities for upstream intervention such as process redesign, substitution, or improved engineering controls. 

What is the Hierarchy of Controls? 

The Hierarchy of Controls is a globally recognized safety framework (endorsed by OSHA, NIOSH, and CCOHS) that ranks how to best reduce workplace risks from most effective to least:

  1. Elimination – Remove the hazard entirely.
  2. Substitution – Replace the hazard with something less dangerous.
  3. Engineering Controls – Isolate people from the hazard (e.g., barriers, ventilation, automation).
  4. Administrative Controls – Change how people work (e.g., job rotation, training, procedures).
  5. PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) – The last line of defense; protects workers when hazards can’t be otherwise controlled.

Why It Matters: The proactive use of Field Safe’s digital FLHA shifts safety from a reactive, form-based exercise to a continuous improvement process that strengthens decision-making, compliance, and overall risk management effectiveness.

Five Best Practices for Health & Safety Leaders

Whether you manage pipeline crews, maintenance technicians, or healthcare teams, these best practices apply across industries:

  1. Adopt a digital FLHA platform with customizable templates, offline capability, and real-time reporting.
  2. Leverage structured data to identify recurring risks, improve your risk register, and support audit readiness.
  3. Invest in worker engagement. The best systems are co-designed with the people who use them daily.
  4. Use analytics to demonstrate ROI and communicate results to executives and regulators.
  5. Integrate safety systems. Link hazard assessments to incident management, training, and compliance workflows.

The Human Impact

Technology is powerful, but people are the heart of safety culture. In the energy-sector implementation above, field technicians reported higher satisfaction and engagement, noting that digital tools:

  • Made safety faster and simpler, not harder.
  • Encouraged critical thinking about new hazards each day rather than repeating old checklists.
  • Provided visibility into their impact—each submission contributed to trend reporting and safety meetings.

Over time, this built trust and accountability between the field and leadership, hallmarks of a mature safety culture.

The Future of Hazard Assessment

The next wave of safety technology will combine AI-driven analytics, wearable sensors, and connected field apps to predict and prevent incidents before they occur.

Studies from the National Safety Council (2023) and NIOSH (2023) confirm that digital safety systems can reduce incident rates by up to 20 percent and increase hazard-reporting accuracy by 25 percent. When paired with consistent worker engagement, the results are transformational.

The Bottom Line

Digitizing the FLHA process isn’t just about compliance; it’s about building resilience. With every digital submission, organizations gain insight that saves time, prevents injuries, and protects lives.

At Field Safe, our mission is to make safety simpler and smarter. Our mobile-first FLHA platform gives organizations the tools to complete assessments quickly, capture data accurately, and turn safety information into actionable intelligence because every minute saved, every hazard prevented, and every life protected matters.

Thanks for reading. If you would like more information about FLHAs, please contact Rayne Nichol, Director of Operations at RNICHOL@FIELDSAFESOLUTIONS.COM

Related Video:  Digital Field Level Hazard Assessment

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What is a Field Level Hazard Assessment (FLHA)?
A structured process used by field workers to identify, assess, and control hazards before starting a task.

Why are FLHAs critical in high-risk industries?
They reduce workplace injuries, ensure compliance, and build proactive safety cultures.

How do digital FLHAs improve safety?
They deliver real-time hazard tracking, analytics, and offline access, cutting paperwork time by 15 minutes per assessment and increasing field adoption rates by 80 percent.

Which industries benefit most?
Energy, utilities, property management, healthcare, and land services across Canada and the United States.

What is the ROI of digital FLHAs?
Up to
$375,000 per year in cost avoidance through efficiency gains and incident prevention.