The OSHA 10 and 30 hour cards are student completion cards from the OSHA Outreach Training Program, awarded after you finish a voluntary hazard-awareness course taught by an OSHA-authorized trainer. The 10-hour card is aimed at entry-level workers; the 30-hour card is aimed at supervisors and workers with some safety responsibility. Neither is a certification or a license, and neither satisfies the training requirements written into specific OSHA standards.1Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program FAQs What the card does show is that you sat through a structured course covering common job-site hazards in your industry.
Which Course to Take
The program splits training into four industry sectors so the content lines up with the hazards you actually face on the job: construction, general industry, maritime, and disaster site. Construction covers building-site hazards including the “Focus Four” (falls, electrocution, struck-by, and caught-in-or-between), which cause most construction deaths and must be covered in every construction outreach course.2Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Construction Focus Four Training General industry covers manufacturing plants, warehouses, and healthcare facilities. Maritime covers shipyards, marine terminals, and longshoring. Disaster site training is narrower and runs 7.5 and 15 hours rather than the standard 10 and 30.3Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Outreach Training Program
Picking the right sector matters, because the standards governing a construction site differ significantly from those in a warehouse or shipyard. The 10-hour class focuses on awareness of common hazards. The 30-hour class goes deeper into OSHA standards and hazard management and is the one most employers want to see from foremen and safety leads.4Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program
Finding a Legitimate Class
Start with OSHA’s own trainer search, which lets you look up authorized trainers by location and industry sector.5Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Find a Trainer Before you pay, ask the trainer to show their current authorized trainer card. It lists the trainer’s name, authorization expiration date, and Authorizing Training Organization. If they can’t produce one, walk away.1Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program FAQs
For online courses, the check is even more important. Self-paced online outreach classes can only be delivered by a short list of OSHA-authorized online providers, and individual trainers are not allowed to build their own asynchronous courses. OSHA publishes the full list on its site and states plainly that it cannot validate training from any vendor not on it.6Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA-Authorized Online Outreach Training Providers Dozens of websites market “OSHA 10” or “OSHA 30” courses without authorization; completing one of those won’t get you a legitimate card. Live video conferencing sits between the two: any authorized trainer can teach it, but the class is capped at 20 students without a proctor, and both trainer and students must keep cameras and audio on the whole time.7Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program Requirements
Tuition generally runs from around $60 to $500 depending on course level and delivery method. OSHA does not set the price; providers do.
What the Course Covers and How It Runs
The 10-hour construction course breaks into six required hours (introduction to OSHA, the Focus Four, personal protective equipment, and health hazards), two elective hours covering at least two approved topics, and two optional hours the trainer can use as needed. No topic can be shorter than 30 minutes. The 30-hour course follows the same shape but scales up to 14 required hours, 12 elective hours across at least six topics, and four optional hours. Falls get a minimum of 90 minutes in both courses because they remain the leading cause of construction deaths.8Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program Construction Industry Procedures
Training is capped at 7.5 student contact hours per calendar day. Contact hours count only time on course content, so lunch, attendance-taking, and any optional testing don’t count. The whole session, breaks included, cannot exceed 10 consecutive hours, and an eight-hour rest break is required after 7.5 or more hours within a 16-hour window. Trainers can split a course across days, weeks, or months, but the whole thing has to finish within 180 calendar days of the start date.7Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program Requirements
You must attend the entire course to receive a card. Miss part of it and you may be eligible for makeup training, but only if you completed at least 50 percent of the contact hours in the original offering, and the makeup has to be finished within 180 days of the original start date. There is no required final exam. OSHA’s rules list testing as optional; a trainer or online provider may add quizzes as part of their own course design, but that isn’t a federal requirement.7Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program Requirements
Getting the Card in Your Hand
After you finish, the trainer submits documentation to their Authorizing Training Organization, which has 30 calendar days to process the card request. The trainer then has to make sure the card reaches you within 90 calendar days of the course end date. Cards go directly to the student, even when an employer paid the tuition. Trainers are encouraged, though not required, to hand out a paper class certificate at the end of the session so you have proof of completion while the plastic card is being processed.7Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program Requirements
If 90 days pass and nothing has arrived, contact your trainer first. If that goes nowhere, email OSHA’s Outreach Training Program at outreach@dol.gov with your name, the trainer’s name, training location, dates, and class type.1Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program FAQs
How Long the Card Is Good For
OSHA outreach cards do not carry an expiration date.9Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Outreach Training – Maritime Course Completion Cards Some employers, unions, and state or local governments set their own refresher requirements, often calling for updated training every three to five years. Whether your card still satisfies those rules is a question for the organization imposing them, not OSHA.
What the Card Does Not Do
This is the point that trips up workers and employers most often. The outreach card is not a certification or a license, and it does not satisfy any of the training requirements found in specific OSHA standards.1Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program FAQs If a standard requires your employer to train you on a particular hazard — hazardous waste operations, fall protection, confined space entry, and so on — the outreach class does not check that box. Employers still have to provide standard-specific training regardless of whether their workers hold outreach cards. Training done to comply with a specific standard also cannot be counted toward outreach contact hours. The two tracks are entirely separate.
State Mandates for Public Construction
Even though the federal program is voluntary, roughly eight states have passed laws requiring 10-hour or 30-hour outreach cards for construction workers on publicly funded projects. Details vary. Some apply only above a specific dollar threshold. Others require proof of training before a worker sets foot on the site, with removal or fines for noncompliance. Some cities and counties have their own mandates too. If you work public construction, check your state’s rules before assuming the card is optional; showing up without one can mean being pulled off the job or having your employer fined.
Verifying a Card and Replacing a Lost One
Legitimate plastic outreach cards carry a QR code on the back. Scanning it returns contact information for the Authorizing Training Organization that processed the card, and the ATO can verify the training from there.1Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program FAQs OSHA does not run a national lookup database, so any third-party site promising “instant online verification” is not using an OSHA system. You can also verify a card by contacting the authorized trainer directly; trainers must keep student records for five years, and beyond that window the records may no longer exist.
Replacements come from the trainer who taught your course, because OSHA does not hold student records. A trainer can issue one replacement per student per class, but only if the original course was completed within the last five years.1Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA Outreach Training Program FAQs If your trainer has retired, moved, or is otherwise unreachable, or the class was more than five years ago, you have to retake the course to get a new card.10Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Outreach Training – Where Can I Get a Replacement 10-Hour or 30-Hour Card Replacement fees typically run $35 to $60, set by the trainer. Hang onto the card once you get it; it’s harder to replace than most people expect.