OSEA Safety Blog

CH&S Manual v. HASP – What’s the Difference?

With construction season upon us and in the short horizon for colder areas, albeit in accordance with the “new normal”, we get many requests for assistance with site specific safety plans (SSSPs), also known as health and safety plans (HASPs), and updates to CH&S Manuals. There is typically a lot of confusion on what the HASP really is and what it is not, so hopefully this article can clear some of the confusion up.

Your Corporate Health and Safety (CH&S) Manual is a systematic interpretation of how EH&S compliance fits your company model for safety and health and how it will be implemented throughout their organization. It contains details of who, how, and what is required by the standards and regulations that govern your industry. This document provides the guidelines for effective management of overall safety systems throughout your organization and includes all regulatory compliance pertinent to your industry. Your CH&S Manual is typically a very lengthy document!

A HASP/Safety plan on the other hand is typically created for specific projects and has sections pertinent and specific to the hazard exposures on that site. These are used frequently in construction projects where site specific activities occur that can alter and change exposures, and often requires frequent updates based on changes in those exposures in different phases of construction. The HASP changes for each project as it should include the project location, project name/number, and emergency action details specific to the location of the site – i.e. local hospitals, local police and fire, etc. The contents, and sometimes the format, of this document are often mandated by the site owner-client’s own HASP and will also contain elements directly from your CH&S Manual.

To wrap it up concisely, your safety manual is the base of the whole organization’s safety management system while your safety plan/HASP is specified to the project until its completion.