Safety program development and review

We help employers write a health and safety program from the ground up, or review the one they already have, so that it reflects the real hazards on their sites and the requirements of the province they work in. The goal is a program your supervisors and workers actually use, not a binder that sits on a shelf.

What we look at

Every province expects employers to identify hazards, control them and show that they have done so. The details differ between Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and the other provinces, so we start from the legislation that applies to you. A review or new program typically covers:

• Your health and safety policy and how management commitment is shown in practice
• Hazard assessment and control, including formal and field-level assessments
• Safe work practices and job procedures for your higher-risk tasks
• Specialized programs where your work calls for them: confined spaces, fall protection, lockout, hot work, respiratory protection, working alone
• Training, orientation and competency records
• Workplace inspections and equipment maintenance
• Emergency response planning and drills
• Incident and near-miss reporting and investigation
• Worker participation, including joint health and safety committees or representatives where required
• Contractor and subcontractor management
• How the program itself is reviewed and improved

How it works

1. We ask why. We start by understanding what is driving the work: a growing workforce, a new type of job, a client prequalification requirement, an incident, an audit finding or simply a program that has drifted out of date.
2. We look at the work itself. We review your existing documents and visit sites to see how tasks are really done, and we talk with supervisors and workers about where the hazards are.
3. We compare against the requirements. We map what you have against your province's occupational health and safety legislation and any standards or client expectations that apply, and list the gaps.
4. We write or revise the program. We draft policies, procedures, forms and checklists in plain language, sized to your organization, and review them with you before they are finalized.
5. We help you roll it out. We support orientation sessions and supervisor briefings so people understand what has changed and why.
6. We follow up. After the program has been in use for a while, we can review records and field practice to confirm it is working and adjust what is not.

The heart of the work is step three. A program can look complete on paper and still miss what crews actually do, and a crew can work safely without any of it being written down. We look at three sources side by side and sort what we find by how much it matters.

What to have ready before we start

• Your current safety manual, forms and any site-specific procedures, even if they are out of date
• A list of the main tasks your crews perform and where they perform them
• Recent incident, near-miss and first aid records
• Inspection records, committee or representative meeting minutes and training records
• Any client prequalification questionnaires or audit reports you have received
• A contact person who can arrange site visits and short conversations with supervisors and workers

Missing items are useful findings too. If training records are scattered across email and paper, that tells us where the program needs a better system, not just better wording.

What you get

For a new program, you receive a complete set of program documents in editable form: policy, hazard assessment tools, safe work practices and procedures, forms, inspection checklists and an emergency response plan. For a review, you receive a written report that lists what is working, what is missing and what we recommend, ranked so you can deal with the most serious gaps first. In both cases we explain our reasoning, so your team can maintain the program after we leave.

What a review report covers

A typical case

A mechanical contractor with a few dozen workers has a safety manual bought as a template several years ago. A new client asks for a completed prequalification questionnaire and evidence of a working program. The review finds that the manual is generic, field-level hazard assessments are done on some jobs but not others, confined space work is happening in mechanical rooms and tanks with no written procedure, and nobody can find the last few months of inspection records. The serious gaps are the confined space procedure and the inconsistent hazard assessments, because both involve tasks where people can be badly hurt. The rewrite starts there, using the contractor's own forms where they work, and the follow-up visit a few months later checks whether assessments are being completed on every job and whether supervisors are signing them.

Who it's for

This service suits small and mid-sized employers putting a formal program in place for the first time, growing companies whose informal approach no longer fits, contractors who need a program that will stand up to client prequalification or a certification audit, and property and facility managers who need a program covering both their own staff and the contractors who work in their buildings. Our team includes people with field experience in plumbing, mechanical and electrical work, which helps when writing procedures that trades will recognize as realistic.

If you are getting started, read Building a safety program from scratch and Hazard assessment and control. If you already have a program and want to know how well it works, Safety program audits explains what a review looks at.

Common questions