New Heights Industries

The new CSA Z1006 Standard for the Management of Work in Confined Spaces was released in April of 2010 and stipulates the requirements for establishing and maintaining a confined space management program in accordance with Occupational Health and Safety Management System principles.

The intent of this Standard was to design it so that it would be voluntarily applied in all Canadian workplaces.  The principles established in this Standard are based on best practices recognized internationally and such that they may then be applied to any workplace.

The Standard has been designed to be used with related occupational or technical standards and is intended to be referenced by other Standards as the primary set of requirements for health and safety management of and for work in confined spaces.

As is the case in most areas of occupational safety and health in this country, confined space legislation differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction therefore it requires the user to determine how their applicable legislative requirements relate to the Standard.

Through the development of this national standard and subsequent adoption of it in all workplace health and safety regulations it will see the harmonization of confined space regulations from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, province to province, territory to territory, federal jurisdiction to federal jurisdiction!

An organization’s senior management must be the leaders in the program, having overall responsibility with workers fully participating in the program planning, implementation, training, evaluation, and corrective action.

Formal and fully documented training is a vital component in any confined space program and it must clearly define competency requirements.  It must be provided to all workers in accordance with their duties and responsibilities and ensure that such workers are able to competently carry out all aspects of their duties and responsibilities.

This training must be provided and conducted by competent trainers and include refresher sessions on a regularly scheduled basis to ensure the skills and knowledge gained in the initial training event are reinforced and if necessary corrected to ensure the continued development of workers’ competencies.

All participants taking part in the training must be given the opportunity to provide evaluations of the training activities so that each course may be amended or modified as necessary to ensure relevance and effectiveness.

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