All provinces and territories · Editable Word template

Environmental site assessment and remediation safety manual template

A complete written health and safety program for environmental consulting and remediation companies whose field crews assess and clean up contaminated sites in every province and territory. It is laid out on the 14 national COR elements and written for the work: site-specific health and safety plans, air monitoring and action levels, sampling soil, water, sediment and vapour, working beside drilling rigs, test pits and excavations, buried utilities, hazardous building materials, decontamination, water and ice, shipping samples and dangerous goods, wildlife and remote fieldwork. Section 15 sets out the law of every province and territory, and federal workplaces, side by side, with each jurisdiction’s ground disturbance, excavation, exposure limit, asbestos and remote first aid rules. It arrives as an editable Word file you make your own.

A look inside

Sample pages from the manual, marked and cut short. Your copy has no watermark.

Cover with room for your logo and company name

Linked table of contents, laid out on the 14 national COR elements plus a section on working across Canada

Section 3: eighteen safe work practices written for environmental field crews, air monitoring shown

Section 15: each jurisdiction's ground disturbance, excavation, exposure limit, asbestos and remote first aid rules

Appendix A: all 74 documentation questions of the national COR elements mapped

Print-ready plans and forms: the site-specific health and safety plan shown

What’s in the manual

1. Safety and health policy

A signed, dated policy, the written program, and responsibilities for management, project managers, field leads, field staff and the safety coordinator, and how we work with clients, site owners and drilling and excavation contractors.

2. Hazard assessment, analysis and control

Formal hazard assessments by type of field work, the 5 × 5 risk matrix, a critical task inventory, and the site-specific health and safety plan reviewed every day in the field.

3. Safe work practices

Eighteen practices for field crews: unknown site conditions, contaminants and exposure, air monitoring, sampling, drilling rigs, excavations, buried utilities, hazardous building materials, mobile equipment, confined spaces, decontamination, water and ice, dangerous goods, wildlife, weather and smoke, driving and ATVs, working alone and tools.

4. Safe job procedures

Step-by-step procedures for starting work on a contaminated site, clearing a location for buried services, sampling beside a rig, sampling a well, entering an excavation, shipping samples, sampling from a boat or through ice, and meeting a bear.

5. Company safety rules

Life-saving rules for field crews (site plan first, action levels mean stop, locates before ground disturbance, stay clear of the auger), and a progressive discipline process applied the same way every time.

6. Personal protective equipment

Our protection levels, gas monitors and PIDs, respirators, chemical clothing, hazardous building materials PPE, and lifejackets and waders.

7. Preventative maintenance program

Field vehicles, ATVs and boats, monitors and PIDs, sampling pumps, generators, remediation systems and satellite devices.

8. Training and communication

Training by role, dangerous goods by road and air, boat and ATV operation, wildlife and remote first aid, and the daily tailgate meeting.

9. Inspections

Air monitoring, cleared locations, excavations, a daily rig walk-around with the driller, sample shipments and remediation systems.

10. Investigations and reporting

Exposures, utility strikes, spills we cause versus contamination we find, dangerous goods incidents, and investigations.

11. Emergency preparedness

Chemical splash and vapour, struck gas lines and power lines, caught at the rig, excavation collapse, water and ice rescue, wildlife, missed check-ins, medevac, wildfire and spills.

12. Statistics, records and document control

Site plans, monitoring logs, exposure records kept for decades, and hazardous building materials surveys.

13. Legislation

OHS law where the site is, TDG by road and air, small vessel rules, the standards the manual follows, and the right to refuse.

14. Procurement and contractor management

Drillers, excavators, locators, laboratories, receiving facilities, air and boat charters and abatement contractors.

15. Working across Canada

Whose law applies, including federal and reserve land, then every province and territory and federal workplaces side by side: the act and regulation, the regulator, each jurisdiction’s ground disturbance, excavation notice, confined space, exposure limit, asbestos and remote first aid rules, serious incidents to report and how fast, and the other rules that change at the border.

Appendix A. COR cross-reference

Every one of the 74 documentation questions in the 14 national COR elements, what it looks for in plain words, the section that answers it, and whether the auditor will also want your records.

Appendix B. Forms

36 print-ready forms that match the manual, each with a form code: among them the site-specific health and safety plan, air monitoring log, ground disturbance and locate checklist, excavation checklist and sample shipment checklist.

Written for the work, not just the province

An environmental crew’s risks are often unknown until they arrive: vapours in a monitoring well, a line nobody located, a rig that catches a sleeve, thin ice, a bear between the truck and the sample point. This manual is written around them, practice by practice and procedure by procedure.

You work on the client’s site and beside their contractors. The manual says how your site plan, their rules and the driller’s fit together, and the stricter rule always wins.

One program for every province you work in

Your crews follow the occupational health and safety law of the province or territory where the site is, not where your office is. The manual sets your company’s rules once and gathers what changes at each border into section 15, so a supervisor starting work in a new province looks up what applies there.

It is laid out on the 14 national COR elements, so it suits a COR audit wherever you certify. Each certifying partner uses its own audit tool, so check it against yours; our provincial manuals follow each province’s audit exactly. No template can guarantee a certificate on its own, and we don’t claim to.

Who it is for

Environmental consulting and remediation companies: field technicians, geologists, engineers and biologists doing site assessments, monitoring, remediation and hazardous building materials surveys.

A template is a starting point, not legal or engineering advice: a qualified person must adapt it to your work and your clients’ sites before you issue it.

Lifetime updates

When the law changes, we publish a new edition and email everyone who bought the template. Every update is free, for as long as we publish it.

Version 1.0 October 16, 2026
- First edition, written for environmental site assessment and remediation field crews and laid out on the 14 national elements of the harmonized COR audit.
- Section 15 sets out the law and the ground disturbance, excavation, exposure limit, asbestos and remote first aid rules of every province and territory and federal workplaces, checked against the legislation in force on 16 October 2026.