Excavation Awareness or Competent Person Training?
OSHA requires a designated competent person to inspect every excavation daily (29 CFR 1926.651(k)(1)). Everyone else needs to understand what that person is deciding.
- Trenching & Excavation Safety. The page you are on. Four parts of awareness training for anyone working in or around an excavation.
- Trenching & Excavation for the Competent Person. The longer course for the designated competent person, going deeper on classification, system selection and inspection. View the Trenching & Excavation for the Competent Person
- Trenching & Excavation for the Competent Person, Spanish. The same competent person course in Spanish. View the Trenching & Excavation for the Competent Person, Spanish
Send the crew here. Send whoever will classify the soil, choose the protective system and inspect the trench to the competent person course.
When Does a Trench Need a Protective System?
The trigger is depth, and the exceptions are narrow. The course starts there because almost every fatality traces back to this decision.
- Five feet. Each employee in an excavation must be protected from cave-ins by an adequate protective system (29 CFR 1926.652(a)(1)).
- Stable rock is out. The first exception is an excavation made entirely in stable rock.
- Under five feet still counts. The second is an excavation less than 5 feet deep where a competent person examines the ground and finds no indication of a potential cave-in (1926.652(a)(1)(ii)).
- Twenty feet needs an engineer. Excavations deeper than 20 feet need a protective system designed by a registered professional engineer (1926.652(b)(4)).
Sloping, benching, shoring and shielding all satisfy the rule. Which one fits depends on the soil, and that is the rest of the course.
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Great attention to detail