A certification audit every three years. A maintenance audit each year between.
The Certificate of Recognition is Alberta's standard for a working health and safety management system. It is issued by Alberta OHS through the Partnerships in Injury Reduction program and audited through a certifying partner for your industry. Certification runs on a three-year cycle: a full external audit to earn or renew it, and a maintenance audit in each of the two years between, which can be internal if you have a trained internal auditor.
Miss a maintenance audit and the certificate lapses. Most of the scramble around COR is not the certification year; it is remembering that the maintenance year is also an audit year.
Documentation, interviews, observation.
- 01
Documentation
The auditor reads a sample: your policy, hazard assessments, inspection records, training and orientation records, emergency plans, incident investigations, meeting minutes. They check that the records exist, are dated, are signed where they should be, and describe your work rather than a template's.
- 02
Interviews
Workers, supervisors and managers are asked, separately, what the program requires of them and what actually happens. A hazard assessment the crew did not take part in shows up here first.
- 03
Observation
The auditor walks the site. Are the controls on the paper the controls in front of them. Is the inspection record's “guard in place” a guard in place.
Each question in the audit tool is scored from one or more of the three. Passing needs a minimum score overall and a minimum in every element; your certifying partner publishes the current numbers. The practical effect: one strong element cannot carry a weak one, and paper alone cannot carry an element that scores on interviews.
What has to exist before the auditor arrives.
- Management leadership and commitment: a signed policy, management site visits on record, safety on the agenda of real meetings.
- Hazard assessment: formal assessments per job type, field level assessments per crew per day, reviewed when conditions change, with worker participation you can show.
- Hazard control: the controls chosen in the Code's order, and the evidence they were used (permits, inspections, photos).
- Inspections: a schedule, completed inspections of sites, equipment and vehicles, deficiencies with an owner, a due date and a closure.
- Qualifications, orientation and training: who holds which ticket, when it expires, orientation records for every worker, task-specific training on record.
- Emergency response: a plan per site, contacts, drills with dates and what was learned.
- Incident investigation: every incident and near miss reported, investigated by someone trained to, with corrective actions assigned and closed.
- Program administration: records kept, statistics tracked, the program reviewed on a schedule.
Element names and numbering differ between certifying partners. The records they ask for do not.
Four findings that repeat.
The corrective action loop is open. Inspections find things. Investigations find things. The finding is recorded; nobody is named, no date is set, nothing is closed. An auditor treats an open loop as a program that notices and does not act.
Training is a folder of photocopied cards. Nobody can say, today, which workers on which site hold a current ticket for the task they are doing. Expired tickets on active workers is a documentation finding, an interview finding and an observation finding at once.
The hazard assessments are identical. See the FLHA guide. It is the single most common documentation finding in construction.
The office cannot produce the record. The forms were filled. They are in a truck, a personal phone, a supervisor's email. Sampling takes hours and half the sample is missing. The auditor can only score what they can see.
One journal, searchable by element, that the crew fills without being told to.
Rate is built around the records above. Field forms carry the element they serve, so the office can pull “every hazard assessment at this site in Q2” in one search. Tickets sit on the roster with expiry dates and alerts before they lapse. Inspections and incidents open corrective actions with an owner, a due date and a closure note. Read-and-sign documents track who acknowledged what. When the maintenance audit comes round, the binder is a query, not a weekend.
Rate does not audit you and does not certify you. Your certifying partner does that; qualified Alberta counsel handles anything with legal consequence. What the software does is make the evidence exist, on the day, in one place.
COR questions contractors ask
Who issues COR in Alberta?
Alberta Occupational Health and Safety issues the certificate through its Partnerships in Injury Reduction program. The audit itself is run through a certifying partner for your industry, for example the Alberta Construction Safety Association for construction. The certifying partner publishes the audit tool and the current passing thresholds.
What is SECOR?
The Small Employer Certificate of Recognition is the version for employers with ten or fewer workers. The evidence is the same in kind; the audit is lighter and can be self-conducted with the certifying partner's review.
What does COR do for us financially?
COR holders qualify for a rebate on WCB-Alberta premiums through Partnerships in Injury Reduction. The percentages change; WCB-Alberta publishes the current ones. Many owners and general contractors also require COR from the contractors they hire, which is the more common reason to hold it.
How much of the audit is paperwork?
Roughly a third by weight, though it varies by element. The rest is worker and supervisor interviews and the auditor's own observation of the work. Paper that the crew cannot repeat in an interview scores poorly.
Related official information: Alberta Certificate of Recognition and Partnerships in Injury Reduction.