According to an OSHA Powered Industrial Trucks (Forklifts) eTool:

Only trained and competent operators shall be permitted to operate a powered industrial truck.

But what are the OSHA forklift training requirements? When is a person eligible for an OSHA forklift certification?

We explain everything you need to know about OSHA forklift training in this article. So if you want to know the OSHA forklift certification requirements, strap on your seat belt and spend the next couple of minutes with us.

PLUS, if you scroll to the bottom of this article, you’ll see a big black download button that you can use to download four forklift inspection and refueling/recharging checklists. All for free. What a bargain! 

To be clear before you begin, OSHA DOES NOT give out forklift certifications. However, OSHA’s Powered Industrial Trucks standard (29 CFR 1910.178) DOES explain the minimum requirements employers must meet in setting up the training requirements that their employees who operate forklfits and other PITs must meet.

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Need to know how to get a forklift license?

In this article, we spell out everything you need to know about getting a forklift operator’s license. We’ll keep it short and to the point, we promise.

Enjoy the article and good luck

PLUS, as an added bonus, there’s a big black download button at the bottom of this article that you give click to download four forklift inspection and refueling/recharging checklists. If you’re a safety manager at work, you know how great this is. If you’re not, download the checklists anyway, give them to your safety manager, and make his or her day.

To be clear before you begin, OSHA DOES NOT give out forklift certifications or licenses. However, OSHA’s Powered Industrial Trucks standard (29 CFR 1910.178) DOES explain the minimum requirements employers must meet in setting up the training requirements that their employees who operate forklfits and other PITs must meet.

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If you want a workplace that’s healthier and safer,  health and safety management systems are key.

Here’s how OSHA puts it in their Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs:

Establishing a safety and health program in your workplace is one of the most effective ways of protecting your most valuable asset: your workers.

And here’s how ANSI Z10, the national standard for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, puts it:

There is widespread agreement that the use of management systems can improve organizational performance, including performance in the occupational health and safety arena.

In this article, we’ll explain what a health and safety management system is, list the key elements of a health and safety management system, give you tips for getting a health and safety system in place at your work, and provide some additional helpful resources.

This article draws recommendations, tips, suggestions, guidelines, and quotes from the ANSI Z10 safety management standard and from OSHA’s safety management guidelines. You may also be interested in this article that lists and explains several different safety management guidelines and standards.

Plus, feel free to download our free Getting Started with Safety Management infographic, too.

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In this article, we’ve pulled together a series of forklift safety tips for forklift operators. Putting these forklift safety tips into action should help your company reduce risks associated with forklift operation.

As you’ll see, some of the most important things you can do are to ensure that all employees receive proper forklift safety training, make sure all forklift are in proper operating condition through regular inspections and maintenance, and perform workplace hazard assessments to ensure a workplace that reduces forklift-associated hazards.

To help with this, we’ve included some helpful checklists at the bottom for performing forklift inspections and recording fuel use/battery charging on forklifts.

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Management review of an OHSMS, or Occupational Health and Safety Management System, is an important aspect of safety management. In this article, we’ll give you tips for performing management reviews on a timely and recurrent basis and in an effective manner.

This article is the last of a multi-article series on the issue of safety and health management in general and on the issue of the safety and health management guidelines in ANSI/ASSE Z10, the national standard for occupational health and safety management systems, in particular. The focus of this article is to provide an overview of Z10’s section 7.

For those interested in reviewing the articles in the series, here’s a list and the links:

• An introduction to various health and safety management system standards and guidelines
• A comparison of “systems” and “programs” approaches for health and safety management
• A look at management leadership and employee participation (an overview of Z10 section 3)
• How to plan your OHSMS (an overview of Z10 section 4)
• How to implement and operate your OHSMS (an overview of Z10 section 5)
• How to monitor, evaluate, and correct your OHSMS (an overview of Z10 section 6)

You might also want to know that OSHA recently released their own Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs. We recommend you check that out or read our overview of OSHA’s Safety and Health Programs Guideline (2016). And of course, we’ve all learned that 45001 is now final and will be released soon, so watch for that as well.

For those of you interested in reading about management review of an OHSMS, the article below awaits you.

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How would your company do during an OSHA fire extinguisher inspection? Or, more to the point, if an OSHA inspector were inspecting your workplace, would your fire extinguishers pass muster with the inspector?

We’re going to give you the information you need to pass that fire extinguisher inspection (Ha!!!–no pun intended on “PASS”).

And more importantly, the information you’ll need to know to make sure your fire extinguishers are ready to save property and lives in case of a fire. ‘Cuz that’s what they’re there for anyway, right?

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Fall Prevention and Protection has been in news a lot lately. The safety news, at least.

Fall prevention always generates a lot of discussions because falls are the leading cause of deaths in construction. In 2015, for example, there were 350 fatal falls to a lower level out of 937 construction fatalities. And fatalities are actually increasing in the last few years, not decreasing.

In addition, OSHA just held (May 8-12) their National Safety Stand Down to Prevent Falls in Construction.

And of course, OSHA just recently created a new final rule to update the General Industry Walking-Working Surfaces and Fall Protection Standards. We wrote an earlier article discussing how to update fall prevention training in relation to this new OSHA final rule.

Plus, I just attended a full-day fall prevention training course offered by the Pacific Northwest OSHA Education Center (this is part of the University of Washington’s School of Public Health Department of Environmental Occupational & Health Safety). The class was led by the excellent instructor Harvey McGill, special “guest star” Craig Hamelund of Oregon OSHA, an all-star panel including David Douglas of Fred Shearer & Sons, Doug Pettyjohn of SAIF Homebuilders Group, and Travis Stone of Associated General Contractors (AGC), plus a good-sized audience of industry professionals looking to learn more about fall prevention/protection and how to keep workers safe.

The class was excellent, I learned a lot about fall prevention and protection, and I left inspired to try to do good work in the safety industry. Not a bad recommendation, huh?

The article below will cover some of what we learned.

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Hopefully, you’ll never be in a fire and so you’ll never need to know how to use a fire extinguisher.

But of course, fires DO happen. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, in a recent year there were nearly 1,300,000 fires in the US, and they caused nearly 3,300 deaths, 16,000 injuries, and nearly $12 billion in losses/damages.

So we should all hope we’re never involved in a fire, but we should also learn how to use a fire extinguisher just in case.

To help, we’ve put together this fire extinguisher guide, which presents the proper way to select and use a fire extinguisher, and also gives you some guidance about when you should use a fire extinguisher instead of simply getting to safety and when you should evacuate if the fire gets too big despite your efforts.

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We can all agree that it’s a good idea to have fire extinguishers at work (and the home, too). In fact, OSHA has rules about that (though, of course, with some exceptions).

But not all fire extinguishers are the same. There are different types.

Which leads us to the all-important question: If you ARE going to buy fire extinguishers, what type should you buy?

We’ll explain the different types of fire extinguishers in this article to you and give you the information you need to understand the different fire extinguisher types and select the right extinguishers for your workplace.

We’ll tell you what you need to know about fire extinguisher types and how to select the right ones for your workplace in this article, but you may also want to do some self study to learn what fire really is, how it works, and how it’s put out. Some people talk about this in terms of something call the fire triangle, and some refer to the fire tetrahedron. Read more about the fire triangle and fire tetrahedron here.

Before you begin, you may also be curious about how a fire extinguisher works. Here’s an explanation taken from a short sample of our Fire Extinguisher Safety online training course.

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