Take 5 Examples: Five Real Tasks, Filled In — and the One That Should Have Said No

A Take 5 is the minute one worker spends before starting a task: Stop, Look, Assess, Control, Monitor. It's standard on Australian and New Zealand sites — mining, construction, utilities, farms — and it's one of the few safety documents that's genuinely meant for the person holding the pen rather than the file.

Most explanations of a Take 5 stop at the five words. This page is the part that's usually missing: what a good one looks like when it's filled in for a real job, what a bad one looks like, and why the difference matters more than whether the card was done at all.

If you want the blank form, it's here: the Take 5 safety checklist — free, fills in on a phone. This page is the worked examples.

Why most Take 5s are worthless

Every site that runs Take 5s has the same problem, and it has a name: tick and flick. The pad comes out at smoko, the boxes get ticked, the card goes in the tray, and nobody's thinking changed at all.

You can usually spot a tick-and-flick card from across the room:

• The task is generic. "Maintenance." "General duties." "Work on site."
• The hazards are generic, or blank. "Slips/trips." "Normal hazards." Or nothing.
• Every answer is Yes. Every card, every day, forever.
• The time is after the job started — or there's no time at all.
• A whole crew's cards look the same, sometimes in the same handwriting.

A card like that isn't just useless, it's worse than nothing: it records a risk decision that was never actually made. If something goes wrong, the card says the worker assessed the risk and found it fine.

A good card is the opposite on every point. Specific task, specific place, specific hazards, controls that match those hazards, a time before the work started — and, sometimes, a No.

How to read the examples

Each example below follows the five steps. They're written the way a competent worker would say them out loud — short, specific, in the language of the job — not in the language of a procedure.

None of them is a template to copy. The point of a Take 5 is that it's this task, today. If a card could be photocopied and reused tomorrow, it isn't doing its job.

Example 1 — Replacing a high-bay light from an EWP

Stop. Replace failed LED high-bay, warehouse B, aisle 7 above racking. Licensed electrician, EWP ticket current. 07:10.

Look. Racking either side, product stacked to about 6 m. Forklifts working aisles 5 to 9 this morning. Floor dry, level. Sprinkler heads within half a metre of the fitting.

Assess.

• Falls from height — working at about 9 m in a boom lift
• Electricity — lighting circuit, and other circuits in the same tray
• Moving plant — forklifts turning into the aisle under the basket
• Falling objects — dropping the old fitting or tools onto the aisle below
• Worst realistic case: a forklift clips the base of the EWP with me at height.

Control.

• Isolate and lock the lighting circuit at the DB, test dead at the fitting before touching it
• Harness clipped to the basket anchor
• Exclusion zone: barriers at both ends of aisle 7, warehouse supervisor told, forklift drivers told on the radio
• Tool lanyards; old fitting lowered in the basket, not dropped
• Keep clear of the sprinkler heads

Safe to start? Yes.

Monitor. Note after: a forklift driver came in the far end at 07:40 — barrier had been moved to get a pallet out. Stopped, re-set, told the supervisor. Next time, a spotter on the floor, not just barriers.

What makes it good: the worst case is specific and real, the controls answer the hazards one for one, and the monitor note is the most useful thing on the card — it tells whoever does this job next what actually went wrong.

Example 2 — Changing a conveyor idler (the one that said No)

Stop. Replace seized return idler, CV-04, about 30 m from tail pulley. Fitter. 13:25.

Look. Walkway on one side only, guarding on the return side. Dust on the walkway. Crusher running upstream. Belt stopped for the change.

Assess.

• Rotating machinery — nip points at the idler and belt
• Stored energy — belt tension; the belt can move even with the drive stopped
• Manual handling — idler is heavy and awkward to lift out
• Dust — silica on this circuit
• Worst realistic case: the belt moves while my hand is at the idler.

Control.

• Isolation at the MCC, personal danger lock and tag on
• Try-start from the local stop to prove isolation
• Confirm isolation covers CV-04 only — isolation point for CV-04 is shared with CV-05, and CV-05 is under someone else's lock with a different permit. Lock box not set up for a group isolation.

Safe to start? No.

What's stopping you, and who have you told? I can't prove CV-04 is isolated on its own and I'm not putting a lock on someone else's permit. Told the shift supervisor at 13:32. Waiting for the group isolation to be set up properly.

What makes it good: this is the most valuable Take 5 on this page. The worker didn't find a hazard that was surprising — they found that the control they were relying on wasn't what they thought it was. That's exactly what the minute is for. A site where cards like this get praised is a site where the next one gets written honestly.

Example 3 — Cutting a concrete slab for a drain

Stop. Saw-cut and break out a 2 m × 600 mm strip of slab for new drain line, ground floor, unit 3. Labourer. 08:05.

Look. Internal, poor cross-ventilation. Plumber working in the next room. Slab age unknown. Leads running from a distribution board near the door.

Assess.

• Dust — silica from cutting concrete
• Buried services — power, water, or a conduit in the slab
• Noise — saw and breaker
• Electricity — wet-cutting with electric tools
• Manual handling — lifting out broken slab
• Worst realistic case: saw hits a live cable in the slab.

Control.

• Scan the cut line for services; check the drawings; mark up
• Wet cutting with water suppression, not dry
• P2 respirator, fitted properly — fit-checked this morning
• Hearing protection; tell the plumber next door and close the door between
• Leads through an RCD at the board, tested; kept off the wet floor
• Break out in small pieces; two-person lift for anything heavy

Safe to start? Yes.

Monitor. Note after: scan picked up a conduit about 300 mm inside the marked line. Shifted the cut. Worth scanning wider than the line next time.

What makes it good: the hazards are the ones this job actually has, including the ones that aren't obvious to someone who hasn't done it — silica and wet electrics together. The note after is a real finding that changes how the next person does it.

Example 4 — Roadside tyre change, farm ute

Stop. Change rear left tyre, farm ute, on the gravel road about 2 km from the house. 16:40.

Look. Road shoulder narrow, gravel, slight slope. Bend about 150 m behind. Sun low — drivers heading west will be looking into it. No phone signal at this spot.

Assess.

• Traffic — vehicles coming round the bend, sun in their eyes
• Vehicle moving off the jack — loose surface, slope
• Manual handling — spare mounted under the tray
• Working alone, no signal
• Worst realistic case: a car comes round the bend and doesn't see me crouched at the wheel.

Control.

• Drive on slowly on the flat to the wide gateway 200 m ahead rather than change it on the bend
• Hazard lights, triangle out behind the vehicle
• Handbrake, in gear, chock the opposite wheel; jack on a flat board, not gravel
• High-vis vest from the glovebox
• Text home from the last spot with signal to say where I am

Safe to start? Yes — at the gateway, not where it went flat.

Monitor. Nothing changed.

What makes it good: the best control on this card is the first one — don't do it here. Moving the task is further up the hierarchy of controls than any amount of PPE, and a Take 5 is the moment you're still able to choose it.

Example 5 — Entering a roof space, summer afternoon

Stop. Inspect roof space for leak source above kitchen, 1970s house. Building inspector, on my own. 14:15, 34°C outside.

Look. Manhole in the hallway ceiling, ladder needed. Roof space unlit. Old wiring visible from the manhole. Loose-fill insulation.

Assess.

• Heat — roof space temperature on a day like this can be well over 50°C
• Falls through the ceiling — plasterboard won't take weight between joists
• Electricity — old cable, possibly damaged, lying across the joists
• Asbestos — house age means it's possible
• Dust and fibres from insulation
• Working alone — nobody would know if I collapsed up there
• Worst realistic case: heat exhaustion in the roof space with nobody knowing I'm up there.

Control.

• Reschedule to first thing tomorrow morning. Told the owner.

Safe to start? No — not this afternoon.

Monitor. For tomorrow's card: early start, torch and headlamp, crawl boards, P2 mask, water, stay on joists, don't touch cables, owner told I'm going up and to check on me after twenty minutes.

What makes it good: a "No" doesn't always mean escalation — sometimes it just means not now. The card still did its job: it stopped a task that was going to be done in the worst conditions of the day, and it wrote the plan for when it will be done.

For supervisors: auditing Take 5s

If the only thing anybody checks is whether the card was handed in, tick-and-flick is guaranteed. Counting cards measures compliance with the paperwork, and it rewards the fastest pen. What to do instead:

Pick a few cards a week and read them properly. Look for the markers above: generic task, generic hazards, all Yes, completed after start.

Then go and talk to the person who wrote it. Not "your card's wrong" — "talk me through this one". The conversation is the audit. Most workers can tell you far more about the risks of their job than they wrote down, and the gap between what they say and what they wrote is exactly what you're trying to close.

Make a No visible — and make it good news. When a card stops a job, say so at the next pre-start. Nothing changes how a crew fills in their cards faster than seeing a No thanked rather than questioned.

Don't set a target for the number of cards. A target for quantity produces quantity.

Watch for patterns across cards. The same hazard showing up on card after card for the same task is not a worker problem — it's a job that needs a proper JSA or a change to the way it's done. That's what a stack of honest Take 5s is actually good for.

Take 5, JSA, SWMS and permits — where each fits

They stack rather than compete. The JSA or SWMS says how the job should be done. The permit authorises it. The Take 5 is the worker's last check that today still matches the plan — which is why a good one asks whether there's a JSA or permit, and whether it still fits.

Doing it with gloves on

A Take 5 happens at the work face: outside, in gloves, several times a day, often in weather. That's the single worst situation for a form that wants typing, which is why so many crews still carry a paper pad for this one document — and why the paper version so often gets filled in later.

Speak while you walk, and the document the law or the client wants writes itself. Say the task, say what you can see, say what you're doing about it — the card is written, timestamped and photographed before you pick up a tool. And the time on it is the real time, which is the one thing a tick-and-flick card can never fake.

Related

• Take 5 safety checklist — the blank form, Stop to Monitor
• Job safety analysis (JSA) — the planned version, written before the job
• Daily pre-start safety inspection — the crew-level check at the start of the shift
• Safety walk checklist — the supervisor's walk of the whole site
• Incident investigation report — for when a Take 5 didn't happen, or didn't work

Frequently asked questions

What should be written on a Take 5? The specific task and location, the time, the hazards that are actually present for this task today, the worst thing that could realistically happen, the controls you're putting in place for each hazard, and whether it's safe to start. If anything changes while you work, a note about what changed and what you did.

What is a good Take 5 example? One where the task is specific ("replace seized return idler, CV-04"), the hazards match that task, each control answers a hazard, and the card was completed before the work started. The most useful examples are the ones where the answer was No — see example 2 above.

Can you fill in a Take 5 after the job? No. A Take 5 completed after the task records a risk assessment that never happened. If you didn't do one before starting, the honest thing is to say so — not to back-fill the card.

How many Take 5s should you do in a day? One before each distinct task, and a new one whenever conditions change — weather, crew, method, location, or coming back after a break. On a varied day that can be several. That's expected; the document is designed to take a minute so it can be repeated.

Is a Take 5 the same as SLAM or Take 2? They're close relatives. SLAM (Stop, Look, Assess, Manage) is used on many sites and is essentially the same idea with four steps. "Take 2" and similar shorter checks exist on some sites for low-risk, repetitive tasks. The principle is the same in all of them: a personal pause, before the work, by the person doing it.

Can a Take 5 be done on a phone? Yes, and many sites now accept digital Take 5s — they have the advantage of a genuine timestamp and a photo of the work area. Check your site's rules; some principal contractors specify the format.