How do you run a hazard identification walkthrough in 30 minutes?

What a hazard identification walkthrough does

Hazard identification is the first step in any safety program. A trained walker covers a route (a line, a floor, a building, a yard), notes what could cause harm, and queues controls. It is broader than a JSA, which is tied to a single job, and it feeds the rest of the EHS stack: risk assessment, JSAs, audit prep, insurance underwriting.

Soter automates the capture and structuring step. The walker uses voice or photo on a phone; the workflow tags hazards by category, drafts controls from the customer's library by hierarchy, and produces a register the supervisor can assign and track.

Where hazard identification breaks at scale

Three bottlenecks consistently surface.

1. Capture friction. Hazards spotted during a walkthrough get written down on a clipboard, or worse, remembered. Many never make it into a tracked register.
2. Inconsistent categorization. Two walkers see the same hazard and tag it differently (slip vs. trip, mechanical vs. electrical). The corporate roll-up loses fidelity.
3. Closure gap. Even when a hazard is logged, the controls are written informally, the owner is unclear, and the loop is open for weeks. Audit prep then becomes a backfill exercise.

How the Soter workflow runs in about 30 minutes

1. Walk the route. Voice memo or photo on a phone as the walker moves through the area. No specialized equipment.
2. Hazards captured and categorized. Each capture is tagged by hazard category (mechanical, electrical, slip and trip, ergonomic, chemical, fire, work-at-height, confined space) and tied to a location pin.
3. Controls drafted per hazard. Engineering first, administrative next, then PPE. Controls are pulled from the customer's library so they match what the plant actually uses.
4. Severity-likelihood scored (optional). Customers whose insurance carrier or audit framework requires it can apply a 5x5 risk matrix per hazard. Off by default.
5. Assign, track, close. Each control gets an owner and a due date. The hazard register is the live document, not a one-off report. Audit-ready at any time.

Who uses this workflow

• Plant safety leads running monthly site walkthroughs and shift-start checks
• Construction site safety leads doing pre-shift area inspections
• Insurance loss-control consultants doing carrier-side site visits
• Corporate EHS auditors aggregating hazard registers across multiple sites

What you get when you sign up

• Voice-and-photo capture from a phone, no clipboard required
• Auto-categorized hazards with location pins on a site map
• Per-hazard controls grid, editable per-customer
• Optional 5x5 severity-likelihood scoring
• Live hazard register, audit-ready, exportable as PDF or CSV