Mike Moore Construction Ltd., a leading general contractor in northern Ontario and two-time Canadian Construction Association national safety award winner, has taken its commitment to workplace safety a step further with achievement of a certificate of recognition (CoR) from the Infrastructure Health & Safety Association (IHSA).
President Mike Moore says that while obtaining certification has been an expensive and time-consuming process, it’s “doable” for small companies.
“We are living proof that you can do it,” says Moore, whose company is the largest non-union construction firm in the Sault Ste. Marie area.
The company typically undertakes between $6 million and $10 million a year of construction. In a busy year, however, volume has been as high as $18 million.
Mike Moore Construction is the only contractor in northern Ontario to achieve certification to date under the nationally trademarked program that provides employers with a common tool to audit their health and safety management systems.
In Ontario, IHSA grants certification. The organization is also responsible for ensuring that CoR standards are upheld.
“Safety is at the core of our business,” Moore says. “While there are a lot of different programs out there, CoR is a standardized system that is nationally recognized. It’s the best of the best. That’s why we wanted it.”
Moore expects that achieving certification will pay dividends down the road as buyers of construction opt to make certification a requirement for bidding on projects.
The path to achieving CoR involves a number of steps. Firms must:
— Complete and submit the application form to IHSA;
— Complete the mandatory training courses — a representative from senior management must complete one course while a permanent full-time employee must complete three courses;
— Complete and submit with supporting documentation a self-audit of the workplace;
— Arrange and successfully complete a third-party CoR audit.
Once the training is complete, the employer is required to conduct an internal audit of its health and safety management system using IHSA’s CoR audit tool, which contains 19 elements.
The internal audit is reviewed by IHSA and then followed up with an external audit by IHSA staff.
Until successful completion of both audits, the employer is issued a certificate of recognition.
Certification is valid for a three-year period.
“It’s a very intensive process,” says Bob Ryckman, safety director at Mike Moore Construction.
“It takes a lot of time and effort. In a small company like ours, everyone was involved in one way or another.”
The CoR audit tool has 13 elements common to all of the provinces that participate in the program, and six specific to Ontario.
Items that are reviewed run the gamut from hazard analysis, safe work practices and safe job procedures to emergency preparedness, workplace violence and harassment and return to work policies.
“Each of those elements has questions associated with them,” Ryckman says.
“You have to provide documentation …. If, for instance, you say you have a training program, they (IHSA) will want to see it. They will also want to see a list of the people who attended.”
In all, the company submitted about 1,000 pages of documentation to IHSA as part of its self-audit of the workplace.
“They (IHSA) had some additional questions, which we were able to answer very quickly,” Ryckman says.
“They then scheduled the external audit.”
As part of the external audit, workers were interviewed on site.
Mike Moore Construction registered in the CoR program about two years ago.
“But we haven’t been working at this full-time,” Ryckman says.
Certification is valid for three years from the date of certification, provided the employer performs and successfully completes internal maintenance audits in the second and third years and complies with the terms and conditions of the program. All internal audit results must be approved by IHSA.
“It’s a continuous thing,” Ryckman says of participation in the program.
“It doesn’t stop between audits. It’s part of everything that we do.”
In a release, the company thanked the Ontario General Contractors Association for its ongoing support throughout the process. To date, 10 OGCA member firms have achieved certification.
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