MSHA Workplace Examination Rule: Records & Checklist

Under 30 CFR 56.18002 for surface metal and nonmetal mines (and 57.18002 for underground), a competent person designated by the operator must examine each working place at least once each shift, before miners begin work in that place, for conditions that may adversely affect safety or health. If an adverse condition is found, the operator must promptly notify miners in the affected areas and promptly initiate corrective action. The operator must also make a record of the examination — and that record has specific required contents. The examination part is about keeping miners safe in real time; the recordkeeping part is about being able to prove, afterward, that the examination happened and that conditions were addressed. Both are enforceable, but in practice the record is where most mines get cited, because an exam that can't be documented completely and on time is treated much like one that didn't occur. Always confirm the current rule text and any mine-type differences directly with MSHA, as the standard has been amended and litigated in recent years.

Under the reinstated rule, the workplace examination record must contain: the name of the person who conducted the examination (the competent person); the date of the examination; the location of all areas that were examined; and a description of each condition found that may adversely affect the safety or health of miners. In addition, when an adverse condition is found, the record must include — or be supplemented to include — the date of the corrective action. The record must be made before the end of the shift for which the examination was conducted, the operator must maintain the records for at least one year, and they must be made available to MSHA (and miners' representatives) for review. The field that goes missing most often is the date of corrective action: the hazard gets fixed in the field but nobody updates the record, which leaves an inspector looking at an apparently open condition. A system that enforces each required field before the record can be closed is the simplest way to prevent that gap.

At least once each shift, and the examination must be completed before miners begin work in that working place. "Working place" means any place in or around a mine where work is performed, so the examination has to cover the areas where that shift's crews will actually be operating — the pit and benches, haul roads, the crusher or plant area, shops, and so on. If your operation runs multiple shifts, each shift needs its own examination and its own record; one exam in the morning does not cover an afternoon or night crew working the same ground. The timing requirement — before work begins — is important and sometimes overlooked: an examination done partway through the shift, after miners are already working, does not satisfy the "before miners begin work" standard. Building the exam into the start-of-shift routine, with a record that time-stamps when it was completed, is the cleanest way to show the timing was met.

MSHA defines a competent person (in 30 CFR 56.2 / 57.2) as a person having abilities and experience that fully qualify them to perform the duty to which they're assigned. For workplace examinations, that means someone who genuinely knows the operation's hazards and can recognize conditions that may adversely affect safety or health — and who is designated by the operator to do the exam. It is not a formal certification in the way some other mining roles are; it's about demonstrable capability and the operator's designation. Practically, that puts a premium on being able to show who your designated examiners are and that they're qualified. Recording the examiner's name on every exam record (a rule requirement) also creates the paper trail that backs up the "competent person" designation, because it ties each examination to a specific, identifiable, qualified individual rather than an anonymous shift entry. Keeping examiner training and qualification records alongside the exam records makes that connection easy to demonstrate during an audit.

Inspection and compliance software addresses the exact point where mines get cited: the record. A digital workplace examination turns the rule's required fields — examiner, date, areas examined, conditions found, and date corrected — into a structured form that can't be closed with a blank where a required entry should be, so incomplete records stop leaving the field. Time-stamping shows the record was made before the shift ended. When a condition is flagged, it can become a tracked corrective action or work order, and its completion date writes back to the examination record automatically, closing the loop that paper so often leaves open. And because every signed record is stored and searchable, producing a year of examinations for an MSHA inspector takes seconds instead of a scramble through binders. HVI's audit checklist and inspection tools are built for this: structured exam records, enforced required fields, corrective-action tracking, and instant retrieval — turning the workplace examination you already perform into documentation that holds up. It supports compliance with the standard but does not replace your legal obligation to know and follow the current MSHA rule.