Know more about COR as a National Standard

COR as a National Standard

Each Construction Safety Association manages a jurisdiction such as a province or territory, for example, the ACSA for Alberta, SCSA for Saskatchewan, and BCCSA for British Columbia. In Ontario, COR certification is managed by the Infrastructure Health and Safety Association (IHSA). Despite being a National accreditation program in name and a National Standard, it is done by a construction safety association in each jurisdiction. It is important to know that each jurisdiction has its own requirements and processes for the COR program. Thus, being certified by one jurisdiction does not mean that the organization is automatically certified in the other. That said, being certified in one jurisdiction does help an organization get certified in another. Moreover, there are facilities to help an organization recognize the accreditation from one jurisdiction to another.

The COR certification is divided into various elements. Each of the jurisdictions has its own requirements and number of elements. The accreditation process comprises two audits or assessments. The first phase is the desk assessment where the documents and records are examined by the COR auditing team to ensure they meet the required standards. Successful completion of desk assessment is followed by a field assessment to ensure that whatever was mentioned in the documents is verified on-field.

The basic COR standard has 13 elements pertaining to various areas of health and safety at a workplace. However, organizations must remember that each jurisdiction can add to these elements. For example, ACSA of Alberta has 13 elements, BCCSA of British Columbia has 14 elements, and SCSA of Saskatchewan has 16 elements. It is important to note that Infrastructure Health and Safety Association (IHSA) has 19 elements for completing the IHSA COR certification in Ontario.