Competent, qualified and certified workers

A week before the tower crane was erected at Cottonwood Place, Owen Hartley asked the crane supplier for four things: the operator's certification, the riggers' training records, the signal person's qualification and the inspection certificate for the crane. The certification came the same day. The rigging records took a week and showed that one of the two riggers had only a general awareness course, not the qualification the work required. He was replaced before the first lift.

Laws in both countries rely on the idea that certain work must be done, inspected or supervised by someone with the right knowledge, training and experience. This lesson sorts out the different terms, competent, qualified, certified and licensed, and describes how Tallgrass checks that the people on its site are what their paperwork says.

Four different words

These words are often used loosely, but they mean different things, and the law uses them carefully.

• Competent. In Manitoba, a competent person is defined in the regulation as one who is qualified because of knowledge, training and experience to do the assigned work in a manner that will ensure the safety and health of every person in the workplace, and who is knowledgeable about the provisions of the Act and regulation that apply to the work. Competence is a judgement about a person and a task, and the employer is responsible for making it.
• Qualified. Often used to mean having a recognized qualification, such as a professional engineer's licence for designing shoring or formwork, or completing a specific training standard.
• Certified. Holding a certificate issued by a recognized body after an assessment, such as a Red Seal or provincial certificate of qualification in a trade, a flagperson training certificate, or a first aid certificate.
• Licensed. Authorized by law to do a regulated activity, such as gas fitting or electrical work, usually after certification.

A worker can be certified without being competent for a particular task on a particular site, and a worker can be competent without holding a certificate where none is required. The employer has to decide competence for each task, using certificates as evidence, not as a substitute for judgement.

Where Manitoba's rules require competence

The Manitoba regulation requires competent persons for many tasks, including inspecting and supervising excavations and their support systems, erecting and inspecting scaffolds, inspecting fall protection equipment, operating and inspecting cranes and hoists, carrying out required risk assessments, and supervising work in confined spaces. The 2025 amendments to the Act specifically require that required risk assessments, such as those for musculoskeletal injury, violence, noise and harmful substances, be carried out by a competent person. Some tasks require more: shoring and formwork for certain conditions must be designed by a professional engineer, and traffic control persons must hold a training certificate from an approved provider.

Trades, licences and certificates

Some trades in Manitoba are compulsory certification trades: only certified journeypersons or registered apprentices under proper supervision may do the work. These include electrician and plumber, among others. Gas fitting and other regulated work require licences from the province. Apprentices must work under the ratio of journeypersons to apprentices set for their trade. On Cottonwood Place, Tallgrass required each electrical and mechanical subcontractor to submit a list of its workers with their certificates and apprentice registrations before they started, and spot-checked cards at the gate.

The training matrix

Tallgrass keeps a training matrix for every worker on the site: Tallgrass employees and subcontractors alike. Each row is a worker, each column a required training or credential, and each cell holds the date completed and the expiry date. The required columns depend on the worker's tasks: every worker needs the site orientation and hazardous products training, while only those who use fall protection need that training, only crane signallers need signal qualification, and so on.

Before each week's work, the matrix is compared with the work planned. If a crew is scheduled to use an aerial lift on Thursday and one member has no lift training, the foreman knows on Monday rather than discovering it on Thursday morning.

from datetime import date
today = date(2027, 9, 6)
required = {"Dev Sandhu": ["orientation", "hazardous products", "fall protection", "aerial lift"],
            "Ana Kowal": ["orientation", "hazardous products", "first aid"],
            "Luis Ortega": ["orientation", "hazardous products", "fall protection", "signal person"]}
record = {("Dev Sandhu", "orientation"): date(2029, 1, 1),
          ("Dev Sandhu", "hazardous products"): date(2028, 3, 1),
          ("Dev Sandhu", "fall protection"): date(2027, 9, 20),
          ("Ana Kowal", "orientation"): date(2029, 1, 1),
          ("Ana Kowal", "hazardous products"): date(2028, 5, 1),
          ("Ana Kowal", "first aid"): date(2027, 8, 30),
          ("Luis Ortega", "orientation"): date(2029, 1, 1),
          ("Luis Ortega", "hazardous products"): date(2028, 2, 1),
          ("Luis Ortega", "fall protection"): date(2028, 6, 1),
          ("Luis Ortega", "signal person"): date(2028, 4, 1)}
for worker, items in required.items():
    for item in items:
        exp = record.get((worker, item))
        if exp is None:
            print(f"MISSING  {worker:12s} {item}")
        elif exp < today:
            print(f"EXPIRED  {worker:12s} {item} ({exp})")
        elif (exp - today).days <= 30:
            print(f"SOON     {worker:12s} {item} expires {exp}")

SOON     Dev Sandhu   fall protection expires 2027-09-20
MISSING  Dev Sandhu   aerial lift
EXPIRED  Ana Kowal    first aid (2027-08-30)

The script flags Dev's missing aerial lift training, his fall protection refresher due in two weeks, and Ana's expired first aid certificate. Ana was a designated first aid attendant, so until she recertified the next week, the site's first aid coverage on her shift depended on one other attendant, and Owen moved a third attendant to that shift.

Checking that paper matches people

A certificate proves that someone passed an assessment, sometimes years ago. It does not prove that the person in front of you is that person, that the certificate is genuine, or that the skills are still there. Tallgrass checks competence in three ways.

• Verify the credential. Check the card or certificate against the issuing body's register where one exists, and confirm the name and photo match the worker.
• Observe the work. For high-risk tasks, the foreman or a qualified evaluator watches the worker do the task before signing them off on this site: a rigger rigging a load, an operator doing a pre-use inspection and a test lift, a scaffolder inspecting a scaffold.
• Refresh and reassess. Training expires for a reason. Skills fade, standards change and equipment differs. Refreshers are scheduled before expiry, and anyone involved in an incident or near miss is reassessed.

Fake or borrowed training cards are a real problem in construction in both countries. Tallgrass's gate staff are trained to check cards against photo identification, and suspicious cards are referred to the issuing body.

Competence of supervisors

Supervisors need to be competent for the work they supervise, as the Act requires. Tallgrass's supervisor standard requires every foreman on Cottonwood Place, including subcontractor foremen, to complete the Tallgrass supervisor orientation, to hold the training required for the work their crew does, and to know the parts of the regulation that apply to that work. Larger subcontractors usually train their own supervisors through their safety association's supervisor courses.

Orientation as the first competence check

Every worker's first hour on Cottonwood Place was the site orientation, and it doubled as the first check on competence. Owen or Ben Nakamura covered the site layout, the main hazards, the site rules, the emergency procedures and how to report hazards, injuries and near misses. Then each worker answered a short set of questions in their own words and showed their training cards, which were entered in the matrix on the spot. A worker who could not explain how to report an injury or where the muster point was went through the key points again before going to work. Workers with limited English were oriented with an interpreter from their crew or with translated materials, and the foreman confirmed their understanding in their own language.

Manitoba's regulation requires employers to provide orientation to new workers before they start work, covering matters such as the employer's and worker's rights and duties, the hazards of the work, emergency procedures and where to find first aid. Tallgrass's site orientation covers the site-wide items; each subcontractor must also orient its own workers to the specific hazards of its trade.

New and young workers

Workers in their first months on any job are injured at higher rates than experienced workers, whatever their age, because they do not yet know the hazards, do not know what is normal, and may be reluctant to ask questions. Young workers carry the same risks and often feel even less able to speak up. Tallgrass identifies new workers with a coloured sticker on their hard hat for their first 90 days on site, pairs each one with an experienced mentor from their crew, and asks foremen to check in with them at least twice a shift. Apprentices are always supervised by a journeyperson in their trade, as the ratio rules require.

Dev Sandhu, the general labourer who started on Cottonwood Place in its first month, wore the sticker through the excavation phase. His mentor, Luis, showed him how to recognize a shoring panel that was out of place, where to stand when the excavator was swinging, and how to call a stop when something looked wrong. In his third week, Dev called a stop when he saw water seeping through a lagging board in the east lane shoring. The engineer inspected the shoring that afternoon and added a sump and pump. Dev's foreman told the story at the next toolbox talk, with Dev's permission, to show that new workers' questions and stops are welcome.

Competence when things change

Competence is tied to a task and a set of conditions. When the conditions change, competence has to be checked again. A crane operator competent on one crane model needs familiarization on another. A scaffolder competent on frame scaffolds needs training before erecting a suspended platform. A foreman competent to supervise framing may not be ready to supervise work in a confined space. Tallgrass's change procedure asks the supervisor, whenever a new task, new equipment or a significantly different condition arises, whether each worker involved is competent for the new situation, and records the answer in the pre-task plan.