It is the first thing every contractor asks, because it would save a salary. The answer is almost always no, and it rests on a single sentence that is narrower and clearer than the one it replaced.
What the current manual says
Under the 15 March 2024 edition, a Level 1 SSHO may not supervise non-safety personnel at the site of work. A Level 1 is a designated employee whose safety and health responsibility is the whole job, there must be a minimum of one at each project site, and a designated Level 1 must be at the site of work whenever work is performed. The SSHO reports to the corporate safety official, the senior project manager, or a corporate official.
So a superintendent who supervises a crew cannot be your Level 1 SSHO. Not because they are unqualified — they may well be — but because the two roles are explicitly incompatible.
If you read "an employee other than the supervisor", you are reading the old manual. That was the 2014 wording. The current test is specifically about supervising non-safety personnel, which is tighter and easier to apply. See what changed in 2024.
Read the role as a whole and the reason is obvious. The person whose job is to stop the work cannot be the person being measured on how fast the work goes. Putting both hats on one head removes the check the requirement exists to create — and reporting upward, away from the site, exists for the same reason.
The two cases where it changes
If your contract calls for a Level 2 or Level 3. This is the real answer people are looking for and it is often missed. A Level 2 SSHO is a collateral-duty role by design: a designated employee carrying safety responsibility alongside other work, needing three years of cumulative experience rather than five. A Level 3 is a designated qualified or competent person doing SSHO duties as part of their primary responsibilities. The explicit bar on supervising non-safety personnel is written against Level 1.
Two hard limits on that, though. Neither a Level 2 nor a Level 3 may be assigned to a project with a residual risk assessment code of high or extremely high. And you do not get to pick the level — the contract does. Check it before planning around a Level 2; where to look.
If the government writes an exception into the contract. The full-time Level 1 requirement may be modified to another level, or a combination of levels, by the USACE contracting officer in coordination with the local safety office, in the contract documents — a collaborative decision based on job complexity and size, with the reasoning documented. That is a decision the government makes on that contract. If you are hoping to rely on it, you need it in writing from the people who govern your contract, before you plan around it.
What lean contractors actually do
They hire for it, and they price it into the bid. On a short duration or a sudden start, a dedicated hire for the project is the normal shape, and that is a smaller cost than a rejected designation letter holding up mobilisation.
What they do not do is designate the superintendent and hope. The designation goes to the contracting officer or COR on ENG Form 6282 with the SSHO named on it, and work must not be conducted until it is accepted — so this is checked by someone else, before you start, every time.
Sourced from USACE EM 385-1-1, edition of 15 March 2024 (which supersedes the 30 November 2014 edition) — paragraph 2-2.x for the SSHO levels, 2-3.b for training and experience, 2-4.b for roles and responsibilities, and 2-8.b for designation and site requirements. Reviewed 2026-10-02. The supervision bar is at 2-8.b(2)(a); the reporting line at 2-4.b(1).