Safe work practices, safe job procedures and codes of practice

This is one of the most confused parts of a Canadian safety program, and a good deal of the confusion is genuine rather than anybody's fault. The documents overlap, the naming is not standard between certifying partners, and the audit tool that asks for them does not define them.

Here is what each one is, who actually asks for it, and what to write.

What a safe work practice is

A safe work practice describes how a job gets done. That is all it does.

1. Get the wheelbarrow
2. Fill it with goo
3. Pour it in the hole

That is a safe work practice. There is no ranking on it. There is no hazard analysis on it. It is the steps of the job written down so that the work is done the same way by everybody, including the person who started on Monday.

People expect it to be more than that, and then write something that is really a hazard assessment with a different title. The hazard identification and the risk rating belong on the formal hazard assessment. Keeping them apart is what makes each document useful.

What the ACSA audit actually asks for

Alberta's construction audit is specific about this, and it is worth reading before you write anything.

The ACSA COR audit document list groups four document types under hazard control:

• Formal hazard assessments
• Safe work practices
• Safe job procedures
• Codes of practice

They are listed as separate items, so an auditor working to that tool can ask for each by name.

Where the formal hazard assessment fits

The formal hazard assessment is the document doing the analysis, and the audit tool is much more specific about it.

It starts earlier than most people expect. The audit asks for an inventory of all jobs or positions within the company, by way of a task list, employee list or organisational chart, with formal hazard assessments against them. So the assessment is built around the job or the position, not around a single task.

That is the structural difference from a task level sheet. A driver does not end up with one document for driving, one for changing a flat tire and one for securing a load. Those tasks roll up into a formal hazard assessment for the job of driving. The JHA, JSA and FLHA comparison covers that scope difference and what it means when an American client asks for a JSA.

Two more requirements worth knowing, because they are the ones that separate a real assessment from a list of hazards:

Four categories of hazard. The audit expects formal assessments to consider physical, chemical, biological and psychological hazards. That last category, covering harassment and bullying, stress and fatigue, is the one most older assessments never mention.

A risk matrix. The audit asks for one. This is the ranking that a safe work practice does not have and should not have.

Source: ACSA COR Audit Document List, youracsa.ca, reviewed August 2026. Audit tools are revised, so get the current version from your certifying partner rather than relying on a summary.

The vocabulary is not standard, and that matters

Now the thing that saves people the most time.

Safe work practices are largely ACSA vocabulary. Most other certifying partners barely use the term. If your partner is not the Alberta Construction Safety Association, you may go through a whole certification without ever being asked for a document by that name, and you may be asked for something else entirely that does a similar job.

This is the same trap the COR guide warns about generally: the number of audit elements, what they are called, and what counts as acceptable evidence all differ between certifying partners. Any article that presents one partner's document set as universal is describing ACSA and not telling you.

The instruction is unglamorous and it works. Get your own certifying partner's current audit protocol and document list, in writing, and build to that. It takes one phone call and it prevents writing a stack of documents nobody is going to ask you for.

What the phrase means in the United States

If you work across the border, be aware the term does not travel cleanly.

In US usage, safe work practices is a category of control rather than a type of document. OSHA groups written operating procedures, work permits and safe work practices together as administrative controls, which sit third in its hazard control hierarchy behind engineering controls and ahead of personal protective equipment.

So an American reader hears a class of control, and an Alberta contractor hears a specific document their auditor will ask for by name. Both are right in their own context, which is exactly how the confusion survives. The JHA page covers the rest of the cross border differences, including the hierarchy having three tiers in OSHA's version and five in Canadian COR practice.

What to actually write

Practical, in the order I would do it.

1. Download your certifying partner's sample documents first. Almost every partner publishes samples of the policies, procedures and forms they consider acceptable, and most expect you to change the logo and the company name and adapt from there. It is the closest thing to seeing what your own auditor expects, and it saves you guessing at the shape and depth. Just do not submit them unchanged, because a generic document set is the thing an auditor spots fastest.
2. Start from your job inventory. List the jobs or positions in the company. The audit starts there and so should you.
3. Write the formal hazard assessment for each job, covering its tasks, considering all four hazard categories, rated with your risk matrix before and after controls.
4. Write safe work practices for the work that needs a consistent method. Plain steps. Resist putting hazards on them.
5. Ask your certifying partner what they expect to see distinguishing a safe work practice from a safe job procedure, and write to that answer rather than to a general definition.
6. Check whether any of your work needs a code of practice, since for some high hazard activities the requirement comes from legislation rather than from the audit.

The thing that makes any of it worth doing is that the crew can recognise the work in the document. A practice that describes how the job is really done gets followed. One written from a template describes somebody else's job, and everybody involved knows it, which is why crews stop taking the paperwork seriously.

Free templates

The formal hazard assessment worksheet, with the risk rating before and after controls that the audit expects.

Print ready PDF and editable DOCX, no email required, and the full library has the rest. If you would rather have the whole document set written and mapped to your certifying partner's audit, that is the paid work, and the software that holds it is free either way.

Related

• Hazard assessments: formal and field level is the hub for the assessment side.
• Job hazard analysis, JHA and JSA covers the scope difference and the US vocabulary.
• Incident and near miss reporting covers the investigations that most often send you back to change one of these documents.
• The COR audit readiness checklist walks the same ground an auditor walks, free and no email required.