Workplace inspection checklist: the monthly duty Ontario writes into statute

Of the five countries this site covers, Canada is the only one where a workplace inspection is a scheduled legal duty with a number attached — and the number is in Ontario’s statute, not in a guideline.

Ontario, OHSA s. 9(26), for workplaces with a joint health and safety committee:

Unless otherwise required by the regulations or by an order by an inspector, a member designated under subsection (23) shall inspect the physical condition of the workplace at least once a month.

The member is designated by the worker members of the committee (s. 9(23)), and if possible should be a certified member (s. 9(24)). In smaller workplaces the same duty falls on the health and safety representative, in identical words (s. 8(6)).

And there is a fallback, which is the part people miss. Where monthly is impractical — a large or dispersed site — s. 9(27) allows an annual cycle instead, inspecting at least a part of the workplace in each month, on a schedule established by the committee (s. 9(28)). Not “when we get to it”: a schedule, established, with a part covered every month.

British Columbia sets a standard instead of a number

BC’s OHS Regulation s. 3.5 phrases it the other way round, and the wording repays reading:

Every employer must ensure that regular inspections are made of all workplaces, including buildings, structures, grounds, excavations, tools, equipment, machinery and work methods and practices, at intervals that will prevent the development of unsafe working conditions.

No interval, but a test the interval has to pass. That is harder to satisfy than a month, not easier — you have to be able to explain why your interval prevents conditions from developing, and “annually” is a difficult argument in a high-turnover warehouse.

Two more things BC adds:

• A special inspection must be made when required by malfunction or accident (s. 3.7). The trigger is the event, not the calendar.
• Committee participation. Inspections under s. 3.5, and major inspections under s. 3.7, must include participation from joint committee members or the worker health and safety representative where feasible. Where neither exists, the employer designates an employer representative and the union or the workers designate a worker representative (s. 3.8). A one-person walk is not the intended shape.

Alberta and the federal regime attach the walk to the assessment instead

Alberta does not prescribe a periodic inspection. What it prescribes is the repeat of the hazard assessment, and its four triggers are the most useful cadence list in the country whichever province you are in: at reasonably practicable intervals to prevent unsafe or unhealthy conditions developing, when a new work process is introduced, when a process or operation changes, and before significant additions or alterations to a work site are built (OHS Code s. 7(4)).

Read that beside BC’s s. 3.5 and the same standard appears twice in two provinces: the interval is whatever prevents conditions from developing. A walk-round is one of the cheapest ways to know whether it does.

Federally, the walk sits inside the Part XIX hazard prevention programme: workplace inspection results are one of the things the hazard identification methodology has to take into account (COHSR s. 19.3(1)). No cadence, but an obligation for the results to feed something.

Most of a checklist is practice, and the sheet says so

Here is where a document like this most easily overreaches. A printed line reads as a requirement. Hand somebody a forty-point sheet and they assume all forty are demanded by law.

On this checklist a good part is not, so every line carries its basis — required by law, recommended by a standard or a regulator’s guidance, or industry practice, nothing requires it.

The distinction separates two different things:

• The check is not required. Nobody is obliged to walk round looking at exit routes.
• What is checked is required. Exits must stay unobstructed, whether or not anyone walked past.

Which is why the sheet should not be signed as a certificate of compliance. The sign-off in section 6 records that the inspection happened, with these people, and that these were the findings — nothing more.

Some concrete examples from the list:

Required. A copy of the Act and the ministry’s explanatory material posted in a conspicuous place or in a readily accessible electronic format (OHSA s. 25(2)(i)) — the electronic option is in the statute, so a link people can actually reach counts. The written health and safety policy posted (s. 25(2)(k)), above five workers. WHMIS labels on decanted containers, and safety data sheets accessible to workers in the area. Respirator fit tests current.

Recommended. Fire extinguisher inspection currency, which comes from standards and service contracts rather than from the OHS act.

Practice. Housekeeping, lighting in seldom-used passageways, whether handling aids are actually being used. Nobody requires the check. They are on the list because they catch things.

Assemble the sheet before you walk

The assembler at the top of this page exists for a concrete reason: a forty-line checklist with fifteen irrelevant lines gets filled in badly. The irrelevant lines get ticked out of habit, and the habit spreads to the rest.

Tick the themes that apply to the area, print what is left, and take that. The CSV export gives the same list with two empty columns — “in order” and “finding” — for anyone who prefers a spreadsheet on a tablet. The editable document carries the full set and you delete what you do not need. Both paths end in the same place; the second survives a dead signal.

The follow-up duty, which Ontario also writes down

The loop-closing obligation is the part of the statute most often skipped, and it is one sentence:

9(30) The member shall inform the committee of situations that may be a source of danger or hazard to workers and the committee shall consider such information within a reasonable period of time.

Two duties, not one. The inspector informs; the committee considers. A finding that reaches a filing cabinet has satisfied neither.

Section 5 of the document therefore lists the loop:

1. Findings recorded and given to the supervisor of the area.
2. Committee informed, and the committee has considered.
3. Inspection records kept as part of the health and safety programme — BC’s s. 3.3 makes records and statistics a programme element, so the sheets are not scrap paper.
4. Anything exposing somebody right now dealt with before the walk ends.
5. Next inspection set against the schedule.

That fourth point deserves its own line because it is what separates an inspection from an audit. A defeated guard, a blocked exit, an unidentified container: none of those belongs in a ninety-day action plan.

What this checklist is not

• Not the hazard assessment. An inspection records a state at a moment; an assessment analyses exposures over time. Findings feed the assessment — Alberta’s s. 7(4) and the federal methodology both expect them to — but they do not replace it.
• Not a compliance audit. It does not cover statutory equipment certifications, pressure vessels, elevating devices, or machine conformity. Those have their own regimes and their own certified people.
• Not the hazard-specific inspections. Confined space entry, fall protection systems, cranes and rigging, asbestos, mobile equipment pre-use checks: each has its own list and often its own form.
• Not a certificate. See the sign-off above.
• Not portable. France imposes no inspection at all and requires the CSE to inspect «à intervalles réguliers» with no figure; Germany’s quarterly number belongs to the ASA meeting rather than to a walk; Italy’s annual figure belongs to the occupational physician’s workplace visit. Copying a foreign cadence imports an obligation that does not exist here, or misses one that does.

How to use it

1. Assemble the sheet above, keeping only the themes present in the area.
2. Write the interval you have chosen in section 2, and why. In BC that reasoning is the compliance test; in Ontario, write the schedule if you are on the annual-with-monthly-parts route.
3. Note who is taking part before you set off. In Ontario the inspecting member is designated by the worker members, and that designation is worth recording.
4. Tick what is in order, leave blank what is not, and carry every blank into the findings table.
5. Give every finding an owner and a due date. One without both has never been fixed.
6. Fix before you leave anything exposing somebody now.
7. Close the loop: findings out, committee informed and considering, records kept, next date scheduled.

And keep the sheets. Twelve dated inspections are worth far more, to an officer and after an incident, than one well-written annual report.