January 19, 2006

The Construction Safety Association of Ontario has co-signed an agreement with members of the Canadian Federation of Construction Safety Associations to recognize elements common to all provincial construction safety audits. Those elements comprise what’s now known as the National Audit Standard and will make it easier for small and medium sized contractors to quality for jobs outside of Ontario.

National Audit Standards

New safety audit certificate opens doors for cross-country project bidding process

PETER KENTER

correspondent

TORONTO

Abiding by new national safety audit standards for all construction sectors will make it easier for small and medium sized contractors to get work outside Ontario.

The Construction Safety Association of Ontario (CSAO) has co-signed an agreement with members of the Canadian Federation of Construction Safety Associations (CFCSA) to recognize elements common to all provincial construction safety audits.

Those elements comprise what’s now known as the National Audit Standard.

While other Canadian provinces perform safety audits on construction companies and issue Certificates of Recognition (COR) to meet their respective requirements, there is no COR program in Ontario.

Under the new agreement, CSAO can perform equivalency audits that will meet the national audit standard.

“We were trying to get some consistency across the country,” says Dan Padden, Manager of the Training and Advisory Department, CSAO. “Last year, we entered into a memorandum of understanding with other members of the CFCSA. That document recognized 13 core elements of safety audits that were similar, if not identical, to elements in other jurisdictions.

“By meeting the requirements set out in these 13 elements, an Ontario contractor could bid on a job in another province, and if the bid was successful, would only have meet the requirements of a few supplemental modules unique to that province to receive equivalency recognition and to begin work,” Padden explains.

While larger construction companies with offices in other provinces would already have certificates from those jurisdictions, the agreement makes it easier for smaller companies to bid on contracts across the country.

Before the agreement, an Ontario company not audited in Nova Scotia, for example, would have had to engage that province’s construction safety auditors to perform an audit in Ontario on a fee-for-service basis.

It’s not a service the CSAO actively promotes, however, largely because of the limited resources available to perform the exhaustive auditing process.

“It’s quite a workload,” says Padden. “By the time you do a full audit, including sites, and write up the summary and recommendations reports, it’s time consuming.

“Even though the service is offered on a cost-recovery basis our staff has limited time and resources to offer it. Under this reciprocal agreement with the provinces we’re getting maybe a half-dozen requests in the first year, mostly from niche-type contractors.”

Other CFCSA members, such as the Saskatchewan Construction Safety Association, began to incorporate the National Audit Standard into their audits as of January 1, 2006. A national rollout of the audit instrument is expected this spring or early summer.

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