Frequently asked questions

No, and you should be wary of anyone who does. IHSA issues the certificate, not us. The outcome depends on your worker interviews, your site conditions, and clearing all three scoring thresholds: 80% overall, 65% on every element, and 100% on legislated items. None of that is controlled by an outside firm. What we commit to is that your documentation and evidence are complete and audit ready.

No. We do compliance administration: documentation, record keeping and audit preparation. We are not safety professionals, we do not hold CRSP, CRST, NCSO or CHSC designations, and we do not present ourselves as any of those. No licence is required in Ontario for the administrative work we do.

Your supervisors hold the knowledge of how the work is done. We turn it into the documented system IHSA expects and keep it current.

• Site safety inspections. That is an expertise role and it is not ours.
• Signing off, approving or certifying anything.
• Writing trade-specific safe work procedures without your team's input. We can draft, but your people own the content and verify it.
• Acting as your internal auditor, or as your Joint Health and Safety Committee.
• Guaranteeing a certification outcome.

Knowing where a service stops is worth as much as knowing where it starts.

No. IHSA requires your internal auditor to be a permanent full-time employee of your company, trained through IHSA. This is the one role that cannot be outsourced to anybody: not to us, and not to any other firm. IHSA verifies the named employee and their training records against the audit submission.

We help you pick the right person, get them booked into training, and prepare them for the audit. The role itself is theirs.

No. IHSA's program guideline is explicit: a person who provides consulting services to an organization cannot act as that organization's COR external auditor. It is a conflict-of-interest rule, and it applies permanently. If we work with you, we are never your auditor.

An onboarding fee to build the program, then a monthly retainer to run it, which steps down once you are certified and in maintenance. The exact figure depends on your headcount, your trades and how much documentation already exists, which is precisely what the gap assessment establishes.

We quote after we have seen where you actually stand, never before. Nothing is billed until the scope is agreed in writing.

Because the obligation is not one-off. COR certification lasts three years and carries an internal maintenance audit in years two and three, submitted to IHSA at least 60 days before your anniversary date, then full third-party recertification in year four. On top of that, training expires continuously and evidence has to exist on the day an auditor asks for it.

A firm that builds your program and leaves has handed you a binder and a recurring deadline you still have nobody to meet.

You keep every document we have produced. The program is yours, not ours. What stops is the monthly collection, chasing and filing. In practice that is what the certificate depends on, so we will tell you plainly what you are taking on before you take it on.

It depends on how much of a program you already have and how quickly your team returns monthly paperwork. IHSA notes that timelines vary with the maturity of your existing system.

One scheduling constraint worth knowing early: the audit has to happen while representative work is active, so seasonal contractors need to plan further ahead than they expect.

We give you a realistic timeline after the gap assessment, based on your actual starting point rather than a brochure number.

Often, yes, right up until the internal audit year lands while they are on vacation, or the one person who knew where the inspection records lived moves on. The failure mode is always the same: the program lives in one inbox and one filing cabinet.

What you are buying from us is that the evidence sits in a maintained register, on a deadline calendar, with a second set of hands on it.

No. We work inside whatever you already use: a shared drive, Excel, binders, or a field app you already pay for. We do not sell software and we do not require you to migrate anything.

No, and nobody can. We would rather say that than take your money. What is sometimes achievable is a documented program plus a stated certification timeline, which some prequalification processes will accept as evidence of a program in progress. Whether that satisfies a particular buyer is their call, not ours.

If you are in that position, call us anyway. It is worth ten minutes to find out what is realistic.

Typically Ontario contractors with roughly 10 to 50 employees. Below about ten the economics rarely work for either side. Above about a hundred you are usually better served hiring a full-time safety manager. We will say so if we think you are in one of those brackets.

Not in Ontario. Some provinces run a SECOR stream for small employers; Ontario does not, so every size follows the same COR 2020 standard. Confirm with IHSA for your situation.