What makes a space "confined"
Confined space training helps you recognize confined space hazards and understand the procedures and responsibilities tied to your assigned work. What you need depends on your duties, the hazards at your worksite, your industry, and the type of space involved, not on your job title.
Confined space incidents are unforgiving because they compound. One worker is overcome by an atmosphere they cannot detect with their senses; a co-worker climbs in to help and is overcome too. Investigations by NIOSH have repeatedly found would-be rescuers among the dead. Almost every one of those deaths was preventable with testing, a permit, an attendant, and a rescue plan.
The three-part test
Under 1910.146(b) and 1926.1202, a space is a confined space only when all three of these are true:
It is large enough and so configured that an employee can bodily enter and perform assigned work. Reaching an arm into a handhole is not bodily entry; climbing down into a vault is.
It has limited or restricted means for entry or exit: a manway, a ladder, a small hatch, or a long crawl to the only exit. Getting out quickly, or getting someone out, is hard.
It is not designed for continuous employee occupancy. People go in to inspect, repair, pull cable, or clean, then leave.
A confined space is not automatically dangerous
The three-part test only tells you a space is confined. Whether it requires a permit depends on the hazards inside, which is the subject of Section 2.
Two OSHA standards, one goal
OSHA regulates confined space work under separate rules for general industry and construction. Your employer determines which standard applies to each job; sometimes the same building has both kinds of work going on at once.
| General industry | Construction | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 29 CFR 1910.146, Permit-Required Confined Spaces | 29 CFR 1926 Subpart AA, Confined Spaces in Construction (1926.1200–1926.1213) |
| In effect since | 1993 | August 3, 2015 |
| Typical work | Maintenance, service, and operations in existing facilities: plants, utilities, campuses, warehouses | Building, altering, or repairing structures, including renovation and new installs on an active jobsite |
| Distinctive features | Employer evaluates the workplace; permit system; alternate procedures and reclassification | Competent person identifies spaces before work begins; continuous monitoring where possible; multi-employer coordination through a controlling contractor; permits can be suspended rather than canceled |
| Does not cover | Agriculture, construction, and shipyard employment (those have their own rules) | Work covered by more specific construction rules, such as excavations (Subpart P) and underground construction (Subpart S), which carry their own atmospheric requirements |
Related rules that low-voltage technicians run into
Telecommunications 1910.268(o)
Includes specific requirements for telecom manholes and unvented vaults, such as testing for combustible gas and oxygen deficiency, ventilation, and having someone available in the immediate vicinity. When a space has hazards beyond what that section addresses, the permit-space rules in 1910.146 come into play. Follow your employer's written procedures for which applies.
Electric power 1910.269(e), (t)
Covers enclosed spaces and underground vaults used by electric utilities. If you share a vault or manhole with power utility conductors, those hazards belong on your entry plan even though you are only there for low-voltage cabling.
Hazardous energy 1910.147
Lockout/tagout procedures used to isolate equipment that could energize, start up, or release stored energy while entrants are inside. Covered in Section 5.
Respiratory protection 1910.134
Governs respirator selection, fit testing, and medical evaluation. A respirator is never a substitute for testing and ventilation, and you may not wear one you have not been trained and fit-tested on.
NFPA 350 and NFPA 1006: best practice, not law
The National Fire Protection Association publishes consensus documents written by industry, labor, and emergency-services experts. They are not OSHA regulations, but they describe what good practice looks like, and they can become mandatory when a jurisdiction, owner, or contract adopts them.
NFPA 350, Guide for Safe Confined Space Entry and Work
A how-to guide covering the full entry process: identifying and evaluating spaces, hazard assessment, atmospheric monitoring, ventilation, isolation, equipment, training, and rescue planning. It is written as a "guide," which means its recommendations are advisory.
NFPA 1006, Technical Rescue Personnel Professional Qualifications
Sets job performance requirements for rescuers, including confined space rescue at awareness, operations, and technician levels. Employers use it when evaluating whether a rescue team, in-house or outside, can actually perform a rescue in your spaces.
NFPA revises and periodically consolidates its emergency-services documents. Check the current edition your employer or jurisdiction references.
Who needs confined space training?
Training follows the duties you are assigned and your potential involvement with confined spaces, not your title. Depending on the workplace and the standard, that includes:
- Authorized entrants who enter permit-required spaces
- Attendants who monitor entrants from outside
- Entry supervisors who authorize and oversee entry operations
- Rescue team members assigned confined space rescue duties
- Competent persons with confined space responsibilities on construction sites
- Everyone else who works near confined spaces and needs awareness of the hazards and the rule that they must not enter
This work shows up across construction, general industry, utilities, manufacturing, maintenance, agriculture, and telecommunications. Employers are responsible for evaluating each worksite and deciding which requirements and training apply.
Explore: spaces you'll actually encounter
Select each space to see how it measures up against the three-part test and what hazards commonly drive it into permit territory.
Which of the following is not one of the three characteristics that define a confined space?
Hazards and permit-required spaces
Once you know a space is confined, the next question is whether it is permit-required. A permit-required confined space (PRCS, or "permit space") is a confined space that has one or more of these characteristics:
Hazardous atmosphere
Contains, or has the potential to contain, a hazardous atmosphere.
Engulfment
Contains a material that has the potential to engulf an entrant: water, sand, grain, sludge, or other loose or liquid material.
Entrapping configuration
Inwardly converging walls, or a floor that slopes downward and tapers to a smaller cross-section, that could trap or asphyxiate an entrant.
Any other serious hazard
Any other recognized serious safety or health hazard: energized electrical, moving machinery, extreme heat, falling objects.
Notice the word potential. A manhole that tested fine last week can fill with methane after a rainstorm, or with carbon monoxide from a generator parked upwind. Classification is based on what the space could contain, not just what it contained the last time someone looked.
What counts as a hazardous atmosphere
OSHA defines a hazardous atmosphere as one that may expose employees to death, incapacitation, impaired ability to self-rescue, injury, or acute illness from one or more of these causes:
| Condition | Threshold | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Flammable gas, vapor, or mist | > 10% of LFL | The lower flammable limit (LFL, also called LEL) is the lowest concentration that will ignite. OSHA's trigger is one-tenth of that, leaving a safety margin. |
| Airborne combustible dust | ≥ LFL | Approximated as dust that obscures vision at a distance of 5 feet or less. |
| Oxygen deficiency | < 19.5% O₂ | Normal air is about 20.9%. Below 19.5%, judgment and coordination start to fail; much lower and collapse comes without warning. |
| Oxygen enrichment | > 23.5% O₂ | Materials ignite far more easily and burn violently. Often caused by leaking oxygen cylinders or ventilating with oxygen. |
| Toxic substance above its exposure limit | > PEL | Any atmospheric concentration above the permissible exposure limit in OSHA's health standards. Common examples: hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide. |
| Any other IDLH condition | IDLH | Any atmosphere immediately dangerous to life or health. |
Common hazards by category
- Oxygen displacement: nitrogen, argon, or CO₂ push oxygen out. Rusting steel and decaying organic material consume oxygen in closed vaults and tanks.
- Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S): produced by decaying sewage and organic matter. Smells like rotten eggs at low concentration, then deadens your sense of smell as levels rise. Never rely on your nose.
- Carbon monoxide (CO): colorless and odorless. Comes from engine exhaust, generators, and fuel-burning heaters, and drifts into openings and ducts.
- Methane and other flammables: from sewers, natural gas leaks, fuel spills, or solvents and adhesives used inside the space.
- Hazards you create: welding, cutting, cleaning solvents, coatings, and cable-pulling lubricants can produce a hazardous atmosphere in a space that started clean.
Engulfment means being surrounded and captured by a liquid or finely divided solid that can be aspirated, cause suffocation, or exert enough force on the body to crush or strangle.
- Water rushing into storm drains, vaults, or manholes during rainfall or from upstream releases
- Sand, gravel, grain, or other bulk material that can bridge and then collapse
- Sludge or slurry in pits and tanks
The construction standard specifically calls for monitoring engulfment hazards, for example using an early-warning system that alerts entrants to rising water from upstream weather.
- Energized electrical conductors and equipment
- Moving machinery: fans, augers, mixers, conveyors, elevator cars and counterweights
- Temperature extremes: heat stress in attics and vaults, cold stress in winter
- Falls through the opening and falling objects dropped into it
- Slick, wet, or unstable surfaces and corroded ladders
- Noise that interferes with communication
- Biological hazards: sewage, rodents, insects, snakes, mold
- Vehicle traffic around street-level openings
Many low-voltage confined space entries are in shared infrastructure: telecom manholes, power and communications vaults, building crawl spaces, and elevator pits. Watch for:
- Power utility cables and splices in the same vault as your fiber or copper
- Gas migrating from the street through empty conduits and innerducts
- Your own truck, compressor, or generator idling near the opening
- Standing water that hides trip hazards, damaged cables, or energized equipment
- Cable lubricants, cleaning solvents, and fiber-prep chemicals in an unventilated space
Non-permit spaces, reclassification, and alternate procedures
Not every confined space needs a full permit entry. OSHA provides three different outcomes, and the differences matter:
| Classification | When it applies | What you must still do |
|---|---|---|
| Non-permit confined space | A confined space that does not contain, and has no potential to contain, any hazard capable of causing death or serious physical harm. | Re-evaluate if conditions or the work change. Introducing a hazard (like hot work) can turn it into a permit space. |
| Reclassified to non-permit 1910.146(c)(7) | The permit space has no actual or potential atmospheric hazard, and all other hazards are eliminated without entering the space (or by entering under a permit to eliminate them). | Document the basis in a certification with date, location, and signature, and make it available to entrants. If a hazard arises, everyone exits and the space is re-evaluated. |
| Alternate entry procedures 1910.146(c)(5) | The only hazard is an actual or potential hazardous atmosphere, and continuous forced-air ventilation alone keeps the space safe for entry. | Monitoring and inspection data supporting that conclusion; initial testing before entry; continuous ventilation; periodic testing; written certification. No attendant or full permit is required under this option. |
Reclassification is not "the meter read zero"
Ventilating a space to clear a hazardous atmosphere does not eliminate the hazard. It controls it. A space that needs continuous ventilation to stay safe still has a potential atmospheric hazard and cannot be reclassified; it may qualify for alternate procedures instead.
Practice: permit or non-permit?
Classify each space. Assume it already meets the three-part test for a confined space.
Space A. A street-level communications manhole. A storm drain runs nearby, and the last entry log notes H₂S alarms in summer.
Space B. A dry, ventilated equipment crawl space under a raised office floor. No fuel-burning equipment, no energized conductors exposed, no chemicals. Evaluated and documented.
Space C. The same crawl space as B, but today the job includes soldering and using a solvent-based cleaner on terminations inside.
Space D. A below-grade cable vault. The atmosphere tests clean, but a 480 V power feeder with an open splice enclosure runs through it.
Space E. A storage silo with a cone-shaped bottom, empty except for some caked material on the walls.
Which condition, on its own, makes a confined space permit-required?
The program, the permit, and the people
What the employer must do
The confined space rules put most of the up-front work on the employer. Before anyone enters, the employer must:
Evaluate the workplace
Determine whether any spaces are permit-required. In construction, a competent person must identify all confined spaces on the worksite before work begins and determine which are permit spaces.
Inform and post
Tell exposed employees where permit spaces are and what the dangers are, typically with a danger sign reading "DANGER — PERMIT-REQUIRED CONFINED SPACE, DO NOT ENTER" or equivalent language.
Prevent unauthorized entry
If employees will not enter permit spaces, take effective measures to keep them out. If they will, implement a written permit space program.
Run a written program
Covering hazard identification and control, safe entry procedures, equipment, testing, attendants, roles, rescue, the permit system, multi-employer coordination, and an annual program review.
The entry permit
The permit is the written authorization for one specific entry. It documents that the hazards have been identified and controlled, and it must be posted at the entrance (or otherwise made available to entrants) for the duration of the entry. Select a field on the sample permit to see why it's there.
Permit lifecycle
Prepare. Identify hazards, isolate energy, set up barriers, and ventilate.
Test. Test the atmosphere before anyone enters and record the results on the permit.
Authorize. The entry supervisor verifies everything and signs. The permit is posted at the entrance.
Enter and monitor. Entrants work while the attendant monitors and testing continues as specified.
Cancel. The entry supervisor terminates entry and cancels the permit when the work is done or a prohibited condition arises.
Retain and review. Canceled permits are kept for at least one year and used in the annual review of the program; problems noted on a permit trigger program revisions.
Construction difference: suspension
Under Subpart AA, an entry supervisor may suspend a permit for a temporary change in conditions (for example, an approaching storm that raises engulfment risk) rather than canceling it, as long as the space is returned to acceptable entry conditions before entry resumes.
Roles and responsibilities
1910.146(h) 1926.1208
- Know the hazards you may face, including how exposure happens, its signs and symptoms, and its consequences
- Use the equipment the permit requires, properly
- Communicate with the attendant so they can monitor your status and alert you to evacuate
- Alert the attendant when you recognize a warning sign or symptom of exposure, or detect a prohibited condition
- Exit as quickly as possible when the attendant or entry supervisor orders it, when you recognize warning signs or symptoms, when you detect a prohibited condition, or when an evacuation alarm activates
1910.146(i) 1926.1209
- Know the hazards, including possible behavioral effects of exposure (confusion, euphoria, slurred speech)
- Continuously maintain an accurate count of entrants and know who is inside
- Remain outside the permit space during entry until relieved by another attendant
- Communicate with entrants to monitor their status and order evacuation when needed
- Monitor activities inside and outside the space and order evacuation for a prohibited condition, behavioral effects, a hazard outside the space, or if the attendant cannot effectively perform all duties
- Summon rescue and emergency services as soon as entrants may need help escaping
- Warn unauthorized persons away, order them out if they enter, and inform the entrants and entry supervisor
- Perform non-entry rescue as specified in the employer's procedure
- Perform no other duties that might interfere with monitoring and protecting entrants
Attendants do not enter to attempt rescue unless they have been trained and equipped for entry rescue and have been relieved by another attendant. An attendant who goes in leaves everyone without a lifeline.
1910.146(j) 1926.1210
- Know the hazards of the space, including exposure signs, symptoms, and consequences
- Verify that the permit is filled out, all specified tests have been conducted, and all procedures and equipment are in place before endorsing the permit and allowing entry
- Terminate entry and cancel the permit when the work is complete or a condition not allowed under the permit arises
- Verify that rescue services are available and that the means for summoning them work
- Remove unauthorized individuals who enter or attempt to enter
- When responsibility transfers (shift change, for example), determine that entry operations remain consistent with the permit and acceptable conditions are maintained
An entry supervisor may also serve as an attendant or entrant if trained and equipped for that role. One person can hold more than one role, but never attendant and entrant at the same time.
Construction sites often have several employers working near the same spaces. Subpart AA assigns specific coordination duties:
- Competent person: identifies confined spaces and evaluates hazards before work starts, and is capable of identifying hazards and authorized to correct them
- Controlling contractor: the employer with overall responsibility for the site. Gets hazard information from the host employer, shares it with entry employers, and coordinates entries so one crew's work (like running a generator) doesn't endanger another's entry
- Host employer: the owner or operator of the property. Shares what it knows about the spaces with the controlling contractor
- Entry employer: any employer that decides its employees will enter a permit space. Responsible for its own permit program and debriefing the controlling contractor after entry
General industry has a parallel requirement in 1910.146(c)(8): when a host employer uses a contractor for permit space work, the two must exchange hazard information and coordinate entry operations.
Training and certification
Employers must train each employee whose work is regulated by the standard so they have the understanding, knowledge, and skills for safe performance of their duties. Training is required:
- Before the employee is first assigned duties under the standard
- Before there is a change in assigned duties
- Whenever there is a change in permit space operations that presents a hazard the employee hasn't been trained on
- Whenever the employer has reason to believe there are deviations from procedures or inadequacies in the employee's knowledge or use of them
The employer must certify that training was accomplished. The certification contains each employee's name, the signatures or initials of the trainers, and the dates of training, and must be available for inspection. Subpart AA adds that training must be provided in a language and vocabulary the employee understands.
Drill: who does it?
Keeps a continuous, accurate count of everyone inside the space.
Signs the permit after verifying all tests were done and all equipment is in place.
Leaves the space immediately on noticing a headache and dizziness.
Orders everyone out because a delivery truck is idling next to the blower intake.
Cancels the permit when the splice is finished and the crew is out.
Before endorsing an entry permit and allowing entry to begin, what must the entry supervisor verify?
Atmospheric testing, monitoring, and ventilation
Your senses are useless here. Oxygen deficiency has no smell. Carbon monoxide has no smell. Hydrogen sulfide smells at low levels and then paralyzes your sense of smell at dangerous ones. The only way to know what is in a space is to test it with a properly maintained, calibrated direct-reading instrument, from outside, before anyone enters.
Test in this order
Oxygen. Most combustible gas sensors need adequate oxygen to give an accurate reading. An oxygen-deficient atmosphere can make the LEL reading falsely low.
Combustible gases and vapors. The threat of fire or explosion is generally more immediate and more life-threatening than toxic exposure.
Toxic gases and vapors. Most commonly H₂S and CO on a standard four-gas meter; other toxics may need additional sensors based on the space's history.
Most four-gas meters display all channels at once. The order still matters: read and act on oxygen first, then flammables, then toxics.
Test the whole space, not just the top
Gases stratify by density. Methane is lighter than air and collects near the top; hydrogen sulfide is heavier and pools at the bottom; carbon monoxide mixes at about the same density as air. A reading taken only at the opening can miss a lethal layer three feet down.
Lower the sampling probe or hose and test at the top, middle, and bottom. OSHA's Appendix B describes testing a distance of approximately four feet in the direction of travel and to each side as an entrant moves through a space, and slowing the entrant's progress to allow for sensor response time.
With a pumped sampling hose, allow time for the sample to travel the full length of tubing before trusting a reading. Your instrument's manual gives the draw time.
Interactive: four-gas meter
Adjust the readings to see what your meter shows and whether the conditions are acceptable for entry. This simulator uses common acceptable-entry limits; your permit's limits govern on the job.
Keep your instrument trustworthy
Bump test
Briefly expose the sensors to a known concentration of test gas to confirm they respond and the alarms activate. Manufacturers and industry guidance call for this before each day's use.
Calibration
Adjusts the instrument's readings to match a known concentration of calibration gas. Done on the manufacturer's schedule, and whenever a bump test fails.
Fresh-air zero
Set the zero point in clean air away from the space, vehicles, and other contaminants. Zeroing next to an idling truck builds an error into every reading.
Continuous vs. periodic monitoring
General industry requires testing before entry and periodic testing as necessary to make sure acceptable conditions are maintained throughout the entry. The construction standard goes further: it requires continuous monitoring of atmospheric hazards unless the employer can demonstrate that periodic monitoring is sufficient. In practice, many employers in both settings have entrants wear a personal monitor the entire time they are inside.
Ventilation
Forced-air ventilation is the most common way to control a hazardous atmosphere. Done wrong, it can make things worse.
Do
- Draw supply air from a clean source, upwind and away from exhaust, generators, and vehicles
- Direct forced air to the immediate areas where employees are or will be working
- Ventilate long enough to purge the space before re-testing, and keep ventilating throughout entry
- Use equipment rated for the location if flammables may be present
- Re-test after ventilating, before anyone enters
Never
- Ventilate with pure oxygen; enrichment creates a fire and explosion hazard
- Place the blower intake near your own truck exhaust or a generator
- Assume one round of ventilation cleared the space for good
- Turn ventilation off because the initial test passed
- Rely on natural ventilation through a single opening
Pre-entry readings at the bottom of a vault are O₂ 20.8%, LEL 14%, CO 8 ppm, H₂S 0 ppm. What is the correct decision?
Controlling hazardous energy and equipment
Testing and ventilation handle the air. Isolation handles everything else that could be introduced into the space while you're inside: electricity, moving parts, fluids, gases, and stored energy. OSHA defines isolation as removing a permit space from service and completely protecting entrants against the release of energy and material into the space.
Isolation methods
De-energize equipment, apply your personal lock and tag to the energy-isolating device, release or restrain stored energy, and verify zero energy by attempting to start the equipment or testing for voltage. Required for fans, pumps, mixers, elevator equipment, and electrical circuits that could endanger entrants. Each entrant applies their own lock.
Absolutely closing a pipe, line, or duct by fastening a solid plate (a blank or blind) that completely covers the bore and can withstand the maximum pressure of the line without leaking.
Closing two in-line valves and opening a vent (bleed) valve between them, so anything that leaks past the first valve drains to atmosphere instead of reaching the space.
Physically disconnecting a pipe or duct section so there is no continuous path into the space.
Removing belts, chains, couplings, or shafts so machinery cannot move even if power is restored.
A closed valve is not isolation
A single closed valve can leak, be opened by someone who doesn't know you're inside, or fail under pressure. Use blanking, double block and bleed, or physical disconnection, plus locks and tags.
Electrical hazards for low-voltage crews
Shared vaults and pits put your work next to systems you don't control. Treat every conductor as energized until it has been verified de-energized by a qualified person. Use GFCI protection on portable tools and cords, keep cords out of standing water, and coordinate with the utility or facility owner to lock out power equipment in the space. If power conductors cannot be de-energized, the space stays permit-required and your entry plan must account for them.
Equipment the permit may require
Testing and monitoring
Calibrated, bump-tested multi-gas meter with sampling pump and hose; personal monitors for entrants.
Ventilation
Blower with ducting long enough to reach the work area, located away from exhaust sources.
Communication
Voice, radio, or hardwired systems that work at the depth and distance involved, plus an evacuation alarm.
PPE
Hard hat, eye protection, gloves, boots, and respirators only where the program requires them and you're fit-tested.
Lighting
Lighting adequate to work and exit safely; approved for hazardous locations when flammables may be present.
Barriers and shields
Manhole guards, cones, signs, and a traffic control plan to protect the opening and keep people from falling in.
Safe access
Ladders in good condition, secured, and extending above the opening, or another safe means of entry and exit.
Rescue equipment
Full-body harnesses, retrieval lines, tripod or davit, and a mechanical winch, inspected before use.
Pre-entry equipment check
Work through the checklist. Entry doesn't start until every item is confirmed.
Why must a sump pump that discharges into a vault be locked out before entry, even when the vault's atmosphere tests clean?
Rescue and emergency preparedness
The rescue plan has to exist before entry, not after something goes wrong. When an entrant collapses from an oxygen-deficient atmosphere, brain damage can begin within minutes. There is no time to figure out who to call or where the winch is.
The rescue hierarchy
Rescue options are listed in order of preference. Each step down puts more people at risk.
Self-rescue. The entrant recognizes a problem (alarm, symptom, order from the attendant) and gets out under their own power. This is the safest rescue, and it's why entrants are trained to exit immediately.
Non-entry rescue. The attendant retrieves the entrant from outside using the retrieval system: harness, line, and mechanical winch. Nobody else goes in. Required whenever it is feasible.
Entry rescue. Trained, equipped rescuers enter the space. Only a rescue team that has been evaluated, trained, and practiced on that kind of space can do this.
Never become the second victim
The instinct to climb down and help a co-worker is human, and it kills. NIOSH investigations have found that a large share of confined space fatalities are would-be rescuers who entered without testing, respiratory protection, or a retrieval system. If you are not on the rescue team, your job is to summon help and support the attendant from outside.
Non-entry retrieval requirements
1910.146(k)(3) requires retrieval systems whenever an authorized entrant enters a permit space, unless the retrieval equipment would increase the overall risk of entry or would not contribute to the rescue.
- Each entrant wears a chest or full-body harness with the retrieval line attached at the center of the back near shoulder level, above the head, or at another point that presents a profile small enough to remove the entrant
- Wristlets may be used instead only if the employer can show a harness is infeasible or creates a greater hazard
- The other end of the line is attached to a mechanical device or fixed point outside the space so rescue can begin as soon as needed
- A mechanical device must be available to retrieve personnel from vertical permit spaces more than 5 feet deep
Evaluating rescue services
Whether rescue comes from an in-house team or an outside service such as the fire department, the employer must evaluate it before relying on it:
Timely
Can the service respond in time for the hazards present? For a space where an IDLH atmosphere is possible, that may mean a team standing by on site. Appendix F walks through this evaluation.
Capable
Does it have the proficiency and equipment for the specific spaces: vertical entry, small openings, long horizontal runs? NFPA 1006 qualifications are a common yardstick.
Informed
The employer must tell the rescue service about the hazards it may face and give it access to the spaces so it can develop plans and practice.
Reachable
Under Subpart AA, the employer must arrange for the rescue service to notify it if the service becomes unavailable, so entry can stop until coverage is restored.
In-house rescue teams
- Provided with and trained to use the PPE and rescue equipment needed for permit space rescues, at no cost to them
- Trained in the duties of an authorized entrant, plus their assigned rescue duties
- Practice making permit space rescues at least once every 12 months, using simulated rescues with dummies, mannequins, or people, from representative spaces
- At least one member holds current certification in first aid and CPR
If an injured entrant is exposed to a substance that requires a Safety Data Sheet, that SDS (or written information) must be made available to the medical facility treating them.
Scenario: the attendant's call
You are the attendant at a 12-foot telecom manhole. Your entrant, on a retrieval line attached to a tripod and winch, stops answering on the radio. When you look down, he is slumped against the wall. His personal monitor is alarming.
Step 1. What do you do first?
Step 2. A co-worker runs over and says he's going down the ladder to help lift. What do you do?
Step 3. Rescuers arrive as you bring the entrant out. What do you give them?
Emergency preparedness
Good preparedness is mostly boring, and that's the point. Emergency numbers and the summoning method are written on the permit and tested before entry. Evacuation signals are agreed on in advance. The retrieval system is rigged before the first person climbs in, not when someone needs it. Cell coverage is checked at the site, or a radio is used instead. And everyone knows that a prohibited condition, an alarm, or a gut feeling that something is wrong means everyone gets out, and the space is re-evaluated before anyone goes back in.
An entrant on a retrieval line inside a vertical vault becomes unresponsive. As the attendant, what is your correct first action?
Final assessment
These questions are different from the knowledge checks. Answer all 20, then submit. You will see your score, a review of every question, and your Certificate of Completion if you pass. Your results are sent to the training administrator after you enter your name and email.
Submit your results
Your score and answers are sent to the training administrator for your training record. If you passed, the name you enter here is the name printed on your certificate.