SSHO training, built on the manual in force
Paragraph 2-3.b(1)(b) of the 15 March 2024 edition asks an SSHO for 24 hours of documented formal classroom or online safety training inside the last five years, and 24 hours more in every three-year period on the contract. Your OSHA 30 does not count towards it. This is the part of qualifying that never finishes.
What the requirement is, precisely
24 hours, within five years
Formal classroom or online safety training, documented. If your last course was six years ago you do not currently meet it, however long you have been doing the job.
24 hours, every three years
Then it keeps going, for the duration of the contract. This is the figure that changed in 2024 — the superseded 2014 edition asked for eight hours a year, and a great deal of material online is still written to that.
The OSHA 30 is separate
You need the 30-hour card as well, and the manual says in terms that it does not meet the 24-hour competency requirement. Two requirements, not one.
Two things in the manual that work in your favour
We would rather you knew these than bought something you did not need. The 24 hours can be multiple classes combined — it does not have to be one block. And hours you spend as an instructor count: teaching an OSHA 10 or 30, or a four-hour fall protection class, counts towards the total, though each course can only be counted once however many times you teach it. The contracting officer, with the local safety office, can also adjust the training and experience requirements for a particular contract.
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 qualification course
An orientation to the SSHO qualification bar — the training, the experience and the paperwork — written against the 15 March 2024 edition of EM 385-1-1. A study guide to the requirement, not the 24 hours themselves.
It is written for one role on one kind of job: the SSHO on a federal construction contract that invokes EM 385-1-1. That is why it can spend its time on the three SSHO levels, the ENG Form 6282 designation that has to be accepted before work starts, the accident prevention plan and the activity hazard analyses, and the RAC rules that decide whether your site needs a Level 1 at all — rather than on generic safety content you have sat through four times.
$249 when it opens. Enrolment is not open yet, and nothing on this page takes a card.
Keeping it current
A single self-paced module on the continuing-competency requirement. Completing a module is a study aid — it does not, on its own, satisfy the manual's training requirement.
Each module walks one part of the continuing-competency requirement, and you hold a separate record of what you have completed as a study aid.
$99 per module when it opens. Enrolment is not open yet, and nothing on this page takes a card.
Being straight with you about where this is
The course is being built and enrolment is not open. There is no card field anywhere on this site, on purpose: we are not taking money for a course that does not exist yet. Leave an address and you get one email when it opens — that is the whole arrangement.
If what you actually need is to be hired, that is a different page and it is free: work as an SSHO. If you are starting from outside the role, read become an SSHO first — the 30-hour card and the experience come before this.