How to Write a Construction Site Safety Plan (2026)

Most construction site safety plans fail before the first nail goes in. They’re copied from a template, given a project name and address on the cover page, and filed in a binder that no one reads. When OSHA shows up or an injury happens, that document is worse than useless because it creates the impression that someone thought about safety when they didn’t.

A real construction safety plan, called a site-specific safety plan (SSSP) or Accident Prevention Plan (APP) on federal work, documents the actual hazards on your specific project and tells your team exactly what to do about them. This is how you write one.

When a Construction Safety Plan Is Required

OSHA doesn’t require a single written safety plan for all construction projects. But that’s misleading, because OSHA’s 29 CFR 1926 standards require written programs for specific hazards that appear on almost every construction site. Fall protection plans, hazard communication programs, and excavation safety procedures are all required in writing when those hazards are present.

Federal construction contracts are a different story. Army Corps of Engineers projects and many other federal contracts require an Accident Prevention Plan (APP) under EM 385-1-1, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Safety and Health Requirements Manual. That document has to be submitted and approved before work starts.

Most large private owners have followed the federal model. General contractors working for industrial, oil and gas, or large commercial owners typically face a contractual requirement to submit an SSSP before mobilization. ISN, Avetta, and Browz prequalification platforms have made written safety programs a standard vendor requirement. If you want the contract, you have the plan ready before they ask.

Even on smaller projects where it’s not contractually required, having a written plan matters for one practical reason: it’s your documentation that you thought about the hazards before work started. If someone gets hurt and you have no plan, every enforcement action and civil suit starts from the assumption that you didn’t care.

The Sections Your Plan Must Cover

A construction safety plan has a core set of required sections. These aren’t optional, and the depth matters.

Emergency contacts and procedures come first. Not a generic 911 reference. Your plan needs the nearest emergency room address and phone number, the name and cell number of your site safety contact, your company’s incident notification chain, and the number for your workers’ compensation carrier. Workers on that site need to be able to find this in under 30 seconds.

Emergency evacuation procedures are where most plans are embarrassingly vague. “In an emergency, proceed to the designated assembly area” is not an evacuation procedure. Your plan needs the actual assembly location with a description or map reference, the person responsible for accounting for all workers, and the procedure for workers who are in confined spaces, elevated work areas, or operating heavy equipment when the alarm goes off.

First aid and medical resources should document what first aid supplies are on site, who on site is currently certified in first aid and CPR, and the protocol for calling emergency services. On larger projects, this section should address whether you have an on-site nurse or EMT.

Hazard identification and control is the technical core of the plan. This section documents the specific hazards present on your project, not a generic list of construction hazards from a textbook. If your project involves excavation over 20 feet, say so and document your protective system. If you’re working near overhead power lines, document the approach distances and your procedures. If there’s an active rail corridor adjacent to the site, that goes here.

Safety roles and responsibilities should name real people. “The competent person will inspect fall protection daily” means nothing without a name and a phone number. “John Martinez, Site Superintendent, is responsible for daily fall protection inspections and will document findings on Form SR-14” is a real accountability mechanism.

Training requirements should list which certifications are required before workers can perform which tasks. OSHA 30 Construction for superintendents. Fall protection training before working at height. Competent person training before supervising excavation work. Document what’s required, not what you hope workers already have.

Subcontractor safety requirements define the minimum standards your subs must meet. This section should spell out your prequalification criteria, what documentation subs must submit before starting work, and how you’ll verify their workers are trained. Many GCs require sub-submitted tailgate meeting logs or daily safety inspection reports.

Incident reporting procedures cover near-misses, injuries, property damage, and environmental incidents. The procedure should specify who reports to whom, within what timeframe, and what documentation is required. Many owners require GCs to notify them of any OSHA-recordable incident within 24 hours.

The Sections Most Plans Are Missing

Even plans that hit all the required headings are often missing the details that make them functional. Three sections stand out.

Subcontractor prequalification is listed in most plans but never actually documented. Your SSSP should define what safety metrics disqualify a subcontractor from working on your project. An OSHA Days Away from Work Restricted or Transferred (DART) rate above your threshold. No written safety program. No competent person for the scope of work they’re bidding. If you’re using ISN or Avetta, your plan should reference the prequalification platform and the minimum score required.

Site-specific emergency procedures are routinely generic. Pull the template paragraph out and replace it with procedures that match your actual site. Where are workers parking? Where is the assembly point relative to the site entrance? Which intersection do you tell the ambulance driver to use? If your site has known access challenges, those go in the plan. The first week of a job, nobody knows where anything is. Your emergency procedure shouldn’t assume they do.

Accountability for daily inspections is frequently absent. Who conducts the morning safety inspection? What form are they using? Where do completed forms go? Who reviews them? A plan that says “daily inspections will be conducted” without assigning that task to a named person is a plan that won’t produce daily inspections.

Pre-Task Planning and Daily JHAs

Your SSSP is a project-level document. It can’t anticipate every specific task and work sequence that will happen over a 14-month project. Pre-task planning, also called a pre-task plan (PTP) or daily job hazard analysis, is how you connect the overall safety plan to the specific work happening each day.

A daily JHA for forming a concrete deck looks at the specific sequence of that task, the workers assigned to it, the equipment being used, and the hazards specific to that day’s conditions, including weather. It takes 10-15 minutes before the work starts.

Your SSSP should reference your pre-task planning process, define which tasks require a PTP, and include the form workers will use. The plan and the daily JHA work together. The plan identifies the category of hazard. The daily JHA addresses how workers will manage that hazard today, on this specific task, with these specific people.

What Owners and GCs Require

Owner requirements have gotten more specific over the past decade. Large industrial owners, particularly in oil and gas and chemical processing, now routinely require contractors to submit full SSSPs as a condition of contract award, not as a post-award deliverable.

Prequalification platforms like ISN, Avetta, and Browz have standardized this process. Your company’s safety program documentation lives in the platform, and owners query your profile before deciding whether to invite you to bid. A missing or outdated written safety program can disqualify you from the bid list entirely.

When a general contractor requires SSSPs from subs, the GC reviews them before allowing the sub to mobilize. A sub that submits a clearly generic plan that doesn’t address the actual project scope gets sent back. This process is slow when you’re trying to get crews on site. Having a solid plan template that your team knows how to customize quickly is a real competitive advantage.

Tailoring the Plan to Your Specific Project

The most common failure mode: copying last project’s SSSP, changing the job name and address, and submitting it.

It’s immediately obvious when a plan is copy-pasted. References to the previous project’s location will show up somewhere. The emergency room listed is in a different county. The site-specific hazards section describes hazards that don’t exist on this project. The plan says “work near water” when the site is a parking lot.

Your site walk should happen before you write the plan, not after. Identify the five to ten hazards that present the highest risk on this specific project. Those get real depth in your plan. Don’t list 30 generic construction hazards with one-line responses. The OSHA inspector doesn’t want to see how many hazards you can name. They want to see that you thought seriously about the ones that could hurt someone on this job.

Revisit the plan when scope changes. If you add a confined space entry that wasn’t in the original scope, your plan needs a confined space entry section before that work starts, not after.

The Bottom Line

A construction safety plan that doesn’t reflect the actual site is worse than no plan. It signals that your team went through a compliance motion without doing the work. It also creates legal liability by documenting that you were aware of safety planning requirements and chose not to actually meet them.

Write the plan after you’ve walked the site. Name real people for real responsibilities. Fill in the actual emergency room address, the actual assembly point, the actual hazards. A 12-page plan that’s specific to your project is worth more than a 50-page template that isn’t.