How often does Washington require a crew safety meeting?
At the start of every job, and at least weekly after that. Washington is unusual in that it does not stop at the frequency — it tells you what the record has to contain, where to keep it, and for how long.
What the rule actually says
WAC 296-155-110, the accident prevention program standard for construction work.
“You must hold crew leader-crew safety meetings at the beginning of each job, and at least weekly thereafter.”
Two separate triggers, and contractors usually only remember the second one. Weekly is the ongoing cadence. The beginning of each job is its own requirement: mobilize on a new site and a meeting is due, whether or not you held one four days ago on the last one.
Read it yourself: WAC 296-155-110.
What the record has to contain
This is the part that catches people out. The rule is explicit.
| What the rule requires | |
|---|---|
| Attendance | You must document who was there. |
| Subjects | You must document what was discussed. |
| Minutes | You must prepare minutes of each crew leader-crew meeting. |
| Where they live | A copy kept at the location where the majority of employees on that site report for work each day. |
| How long | Retained for at least one year. |
A verbal talk that nobody wrote down does not satisfy this rule, however good the talk was. Neither does a sheet with signatures but no indication of what was covered — the subjects discussed are named separately from the attendance for a reason.
Is there a small-employer exemption?
Not for the crew meeting requirement. Washington does not scale this one by headcount the way some states scale their safety committee rules. A two-person crew on a job site is a crew.
There is a narrow exemption elsewhere in the rule for certain maintenance and repair work an employer does on its own premises where the project does not exceed one week. That is a specific carve-out, not a general small business exemption, and it is worth reading in full rather than assuming it covers you.
Questions we get asked
We hold one every Monday. Are we covered?
For the weekly part, yes. The part people miss is the start of each job. If you mobilised on a new site on Wednesday, that site needed its own meeting when it started.
Does one meeting cover all our crews?
The rule says crew leader-crew meetings. One meeting at the shop with two of five foremen present is difficult to describe as each crew leader holding a meeting with their crew.
Do the minutes have to be on site?
A copy has to be kept where the majority of that site's employees report for work each day. If an inspector asks on site, “it's in the office” is not what the rule describes.
How long do we keep them?
At least one year. That is the minimum — a general contractor or an insurer may ask for longer, and there is no penalty for keeping more.
We're a sub. Does the GC's meeting count for us?
Your crew leader holding a meeting with your crew is what the rule describes. Treat a GC's all-hands as additional, and keep your own record.
How Tailboard handles it
Washington's rule is close to a specification for what we built.
The record is the minutes
Every closed meeting records the date, the topic and its OSHA reference, who ran it, which crew, and every person who signed — attendance and subjects discussed, in one sealed record you can print or hand over.
It counts the week for you
Tell it you work in Washington and the dashboard counts down to the weekly mark and prints WAC 296-155-110 next to it. Records stay available well past the one-year retention, and export as PDF whenever you want a copy of your own.
Crew members never need an account and never cost you anything — they tap their name and sign, with no app to install. Plans start at $29 a month for two user accounts; signing on separate phones at the same time comes with Company at $59. We're a Washington business ourselves, run out of Kennewick.
This page describes a published Washington regulation and is not legal advice. Whether a rule applies to your operation, and whether you have met it, is between you, L&I and your own safety professional. Washington L&I offers free consultations that do not carry citations. The start-of-job meeting is your responsibility to schedule; Tailboard counts the weekly interval, not your mobilisation dates.