How often does Washington require a crew safety meeting?
The answer is 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. Further down is the written hazard-assessment certification Washington asks for, which is what a job hazard analysis becomes when it is filed.
What the rule actually says
The rule is WAC 296-155-110, the accident prevention program standard for construction work. The meeting is subsection (5); what the record holds is (6) to (8); the walk-around is (9). Those are the numbers Tailboard prints on the records.
“You must hold crew leader-crew safety meetings at the beginning of each job, and at least weekly thereafter.”
There are 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 trips people up. 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?
There is none 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 one narrow carve-out in the same section: maintenance and repair work, including painting and decorating, done on the employer’s own premises, where the project does not exceed one week, by an employer already meeting the general accident prevention program and safety committee rules (WAC 296-155-110(1)). A contractor on a customer’s site is outside all three conditions. It is a specific carve-out, not a small business exemption.
The other weekly thing, and what the meeting has to cover
The same section asks for more than a meeting. Three items sit next to it in WAC 296-155-110 and get missed far more often.
A weekly walk-around inspection
At the beginning of each job, and at least weekly after that, you must walk the site jointly: one member of management and one employee the crew elected as their representative. It has to be documented, and the records kept until the job is finished (subsection 9).
What the meeting must address
It has to include a review of any walk-around inspection since the last meeting, any citation received, and any accident investigation, and then the attendance and the subjects discussed are written down (subsection 6). A talk on ladders that never mentions Tuesday's walk-around is missing a required item.
A written accident prevention program
It must be outlined in writing and tailored to your operation, with a safety orientation for every new person that covers reporting injuries, first-aid locations, PPE and how to report an unsafe condition (subsections 2 to 4, and WAC 296-800-14005).
A first-aid card on every crew
Wherever a crew of two or more is working, someone present must hold a valid first-aid certificate, and every crew leader or supervisor must hold one themselves. A new crew leader gets thirty days if a certified worker is in the immediate area (WAC 296-155-120).
Also on L&I's list for a small crew are the outdoor heat rule, which runs all year with an 80°F action level and counts vehicle cabs and tents as outdoors (WAC 296-62-095, since July 2023); the wildfire smoke chapter (296-820, since January 2024); and penalties that track federal OSHA's, currently $16,550 per serious violation and $165,514 per willful or repeat one. Checked against the WAC text on 8 September 2026.
Does Washington require a job hazard analysis?
Not by that name, but it requires the thing a JHA is, in writing, and it is the one state that does so for a construction crew.
Washington’s core rules apply to every employer, construction included. Before the crew relies on PPE you must assess the work for hazards, pick the PPE, and keep a written certification that the assessment was done (WAC 296-800-16005 and 296-800-16010). The certification has five parts, and an inspector will look for all five:
| What the certification must carry | |
|---|---|
| Workplace | The name of the workplace assessed. |
| Address | The address of the workplace inspected for hazards. On a job site, that is the site. |
| Who | The name of the person certifying the assessment was done. |
| When | The date or dates of the assessment. |
| What it is | A statement identifying the document as the certification of hazard assessment for PPE. |
A job hazard analysis done on the tailgate, with the hazards checked, the PPE chosen, the address, the person who did it and the date, is that certification. One with no address is not, which is why a Washington JHA in Tailboard will not file without one. L&I and federal OSHA both call the document a JHA; Oregon and most GCs say JSA; a federal job says AHA. What every state asks for.
What the JHA record has to show
Washington names the certification’s five parts. The rest is what the same chapter asks you to do with the assessment.
| What the record shows | |
|---|---|
| Where | The workplace and its address, from WAC 296-800-16010. A job site is a workplace, so a new site is a new certification. |
| Hazards found | The assessment itself: what hazards are present or likely for the work (WAC 296-800-16005). |
| PPE selected | What was chosen for those hazards, and the rule says each affected employee is told what was selected. Signatures under the list are the evidence they were. |
| Controls | Not a certification element, but the weekly meeting has to review the walk-around and any hazards found (WAC 296-155-110(6)), and a JHA with nothing done about its hazards is the page an inspector reads twice. |
| Who and when | The person certifying and the date or dates of the assessment. |
| The sentence | A statement that the document is the certification of hazard assessment for PPE. Without it, a perfectly good JHA is not the certification. |
Keep it with the meeting minutes for that site: the minutes must be held where the crew reports for work and kept a year, and a GC or L&I asking for one will ask for the other.
Questions about the JHA
One JHA per job, or one per day?
The certification is of a workplace assessment, so one per site, redone when the work or the site changes enough that the hazards do. A crew that runs the same job for three weeks is on one JHA; a crew that moves to a new address on Thursday needs another, because the address is on it.
Does the JHA replace the weekly meeting?
No. The meeting and the walk-around are weekly and at the start of each job under WAC 296-155-110(5) and (9); the certification is per workplace under the core rules. Most crews do both on the same tailgate at the start of a job, which is fine, as long as both records exist.
Our GC calls it a pre-task plan. Is that the same thing?
It is the same document with the GC’s name on it. A pre-task plan that carries the five certification elements satisfies Washington; one that does not is the GC’s paperwork, not the state’s. Federal jobs call it an activity hazard analysis under EM 385-1-1.
Who else asks for it?
Every prequalification questionnaire asks whether you have a hazard analysis process, and a general contractor wants one per crew per day on most commercial sites. Neither cares which state you are in; both care that the record exists before the work, not after the incident.
Questions we get asked
We hold one every Monday. Are we covered?
For the weekly part, yes, you are. The part people miss is the start of each job. If you mobilized 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?
You 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?
It can, but only with the general contractor's permission: the rule lets a subcontractor satisfy the meeting requirement by attending the prime's crew meeting. Without that permission, or if the GC's meeting does not cover your crew's work, your crew leader holds your own. Either way keep your own record, because the GC's minutes are theirs, not yours.
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(5) next to it. Records stay available well past the one-year retention, and export as PDF whenever you want a copy of your own.
A filed JHA is your PPE hazard-assessment certification
Washington's core rules also want a written certification that the hazards of the work were assessed for PPE - the workplace, its address, who certified, the date, and a sentence saying so (WAC 296-800-16010). A JHA filed in Tailboard carries all five, sealed, with the crew's signatures under it. It is on the Company tier and Fleet. What other states require.
Crew members never need an account and never cost you anything - they tap their name and sign, with no app to install. Most start on Company at $89 a month, which covers six user accounts and lets the crew sign on separate phones at the same time. Tiers run from $29. 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 mobilization dates.