Twenty-five workers tested in two hours at a Langley site, funded through the Construction Industry Program.
Orion Construction is a British Columbia construction company. Clear Work has provided mobile occupational hearing testing for their crews on site, including visits in Langley and Surrey, and continues to test their workers on an ongoing basis.
WorkSafeBC requires employers to provide hearing tests for workers exposed to noise at or above the exposure limits, and to repeat that testing annually. For a construction company, meeting that requirement the usual way means sending workers off site to a clinic, one at a time, and losing most of a working day for each of them.
Across a 25-person crew that is a serious hit to a schedule that rarely has slack in it. Orion Construction needed their crew tested and their documentation in order, without standing the site down to do it.
Our technician arrived at Orion's Langley site with calibrated audiometric equipment and set up on location. Workers came through a few at a time rather than the whole crew stopping at once, so the site kept moving while testing ran.
All 25 workers were tested in two hours. Results were compiled into documentation organized for WorkSafeBC, audits and Orion's own records.
Because Orion's classification unit falls under WorkSafeBC's Construction Industry Program, this testing is already paid for through the assessments they pay to WorkSafeBC every year. Clear Work is a WorkSafeBC-Authorized Industrial Audiometric Business (IAB #436) and bills WorkSafeBC directly for eligible construction testing.
Orion received no invoice for the testing. Many construction employers are paying into that fund and arranging clinic appointments they do not need to pay for twice. You can read more on our Construction Industry Program page, or see what the regulation actually requires on our WorkSafeBC hearing testing requirements page.
The headline number on this job is not 25 workers or two hours. It is five visits.
Compliance testing is the kind of service a company changes supplier over without much thought, because most of it looks the same on paper. Orion have booked us five times and rebooked for December before we had packed up. That happens when testing stops being a disruption to plan around and becomes something that takes a morning and costs nothing.
For any construction employer in British Columbia, the question worth asking is simple: are you paying a clinic for hearing tests that your WorkSafeBC assessments have already covered?
If your company's classification unit falls under the Construction Industry Program, annual hearing testing for your workers is covered through the assessments you already pay to WorkSafeBC. Clear Work is a WorkSafeBC-Authorized Industrial Audiometric Business (IAB #436) and bills WorkSafeBC directly, so eligible employers receive no invoice from us for the testing. We can confirm whether your classification unit qualifies before you book.
At Orion's Langley site we tested 25 workers in two hours. Time on site depends on crew size, and workers come through a few at a time rather than all stopping at once, so the rest of the crew keeps working while testing runs.
WorkSafeBC requires employers to provide hearing tests for workers exposed to noise at or above the exposure limits, repeated annually. The details of what your program must include are set out in Part 7 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation — we cover them in plain language on our WorkSafeBC hearing testing requirements page.
If your crew works in noise and your classification unit falls under the Construction Industry Program, your annual hearing testing may already be covered by the WorkSafeBC assessments you pay. Tell us your classification unit and crew size and we will confirm it before you book. We reply within 2 business hours.