02 Audit Checklist Master Index

The audit is organized into 20 categories. The spine is the management-system order of ISO 45001 (leadership, participation, planning, support, operation, evaluation, improvement) (ISO 45001:2018, cl. 4 to 10); the technical content inside the spine comes from NFPA 1550 (NFPA 1550, 2024), the COR national elements (CFCSA, 2021) and the CFAI criteria (CPSE, 2019); the legal overlay tags each category to the jurisdiction topic pages that hold the provincial and territorial requirements it discharges (00 Jurisdiction Index). The ordering is deliberate: categories 1 to 6 are the system, 7 to 17 are the technical programs, 18 to 20 are the assurance loop that checks the rest.

Each category has one or more checklist notes titled “Checklist - <Category>”. This index lists them, says which are written in this package and which program modules feed them, repeats the scoring rules in short, carries the roll-up worksheet, and shows how to run the full annual audit in five days.

Tags: ISO = ISO 45001:2018 clause (ISO 45001:2018); Jurisdiction topic = the principal Part 10 topic pages that hold each province’s and territory’s requirements for the category (each checklist’s Jurisdiction requirements table lists every topic it relies on; 00 Jurisdiction Index has the full set); COR = CFCSA national element number (CFCSA, 2021); 1550 = NFPA 1550 (2024) chapter (NFPA 1550, 2024); CFAI = criterion or performance indicator, 10th edition, core competencies marked CC (CPSE, 2019); the 11th edition applies to agencies appearing from 2027 (CPSE, 2024). The full crosswalk with paraphrased intent is in 01 Audit Program section 4.1.

Doc_ids: the category checklists are FSSMS-AUD-C<category number>. The checklists written with the program modules carry FSSMS-AUD-P<program number>, with a letter suffix where a program has more than one note. Both are shown below without the FSSMS-AUD- prefix, so read the # column, not the doc_id, for the category.

The checklists written for this index (categories 1 to 6, 15 and 17 to 20, and the program checklists for apparatus, confined space, facilities, training safety, water and working at heights) have the same parts, so an auditor can move between them without relearning the form:

1. Scope: what the category covers and what it leaves to another category.
2. Criteria: a table of the standards and law that set the items, with citations.
3. How to score: a five-line pointer to section 5 of this index.
4. Checklist table with these columns: # | Item | Stage | Wt | Evid | CFAI | Scoring anchors (1 / 2 / 3) | D | I | E | Score | Finding | Owner | Due. Stage is S1, S2 or S3. Wt is C3, K2 or S1, with L for legislated. Evid is D, O, I or a both-required combination. CFAI is the 10th edition indicator number the item answers, or a dash. The anchors say what a 1, a 2 and a 3 look like for that item; a 0 is always “not in place”. The last seven columns are completed by the auditor.
5. Effectiveness questions: three questions that cannot be answered from documents; the auditor answers each from observation or interview and records the evidence. One of the three in every category is, or includes, whether members report they can raise a concern in this area and get an answer.
6. Accountability loop item: the last item of every checklist scores the program’s accountability and closed-feedback-loop table and its loop test.
7. Interview and observation prompts: the category’s slice of the question bank.
8. Jurisdiction requirements (the topic pages the category relies on) and References.

Short-form checklists. The checklists written inside the other program modules (respiratory protection, protective clothing, decontamination, cancer prevention, infection control, medical and fitness, rehabilitation, psychological health, workplace violence, emergency operations, hazardous materials, wildland and weather, incident reporting, and the conditional modules) keep the module’s own table: item, stage, evidence expected and the 0 to 3 score, with the scoring guidance in the row or in a “3 looks like” column, the three effectiveness questions, a sampling or “how to run this category” note in place of the prompt list, and the accountability-loop and psychological-safety items. Their scoring sections state the unweighted mean. To fold one into the weighted roll-up, the auditor assigns each item its weight and evidence code at the planning meeting from 01 Audit Program sections 5.3 and 5.4 (L and C3 for every item that discharges a legal duty or a critical control) and records them on the score sheet; until that is done, the short-form mean is reported on its own line and is not entered in the category percentage.

Full rules in 01 Audit Program section 5. In short:

1. Score each item on three dimensions, 0 to 3: D documentation, I implementation, E effectiveness.
2. Derive the item score: 0 not in place; 1 documented but not implemented (I of 0 or 1); 2 implemented but not verified effective (I at least 2, E of 0 or 1); 3 implemented and effective with evidence (I at least 2, E at least 2).
3. Items coded D+I, D+O, O+I or D+O+I need both evidence types to score above 1 on implementation. Interview evidence counts when a majority of those interviewed answer positively and specifically (CFCSA, 2021; CSNS, 2023).
4. Weights: C3 critical (x3), K2 core (x2), S1 supporting (x1). L items must score at least 2 or the category fails its legislated floor.
5. Category score = sum(weight x item score) / sum(weight x 3). Pass = program score at least 80 per cent, every category at least 50 per cent, every legislated floor met, no open major at the close of the corrective action window (CFCSA, 2021).
6. Effectiveness index = sum(weight x E) / sum(weight x 3); maps to the maturity band (Reacting under 25; Complying 25 to 44; Building 45 to 64; Learning 65 to 84; Generative 85 and above with program score at least 80 and no open major).

Complete one row per category from the category score sheets. The worksheet is a markdown table so it can be rebuilt in any spreadsheet; the formulas are stated in words.

Formulas in words.

• Category % = (Sum wt x score) divided by (Sum wt x 3), times 100. Where a category has more than one note (5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18), sum the notes’ items into the one row, except a program-team checklist the audit plan scores on the spare row 21.
• Effectiveness % and Documentation % = the same with E and D in place of the item score.
• Program % = the sum of every applicable category’s “Sum wt x score” divided by the sum of every applicable category’s “Sum wt x 3”, times 100. It is not the average of the category percentages; a long category weighs more than a short one, by design.
• L floor met = Y only if every L item in the category has an item score of at least 2.
• Trend = Category % this audit minus last audit, in percentage points.

Result block (copied to the audit report executive summary):

For a mid-size department (roughly 150 to 400 members, 8 to 15 stations, composite) with a team of three trained internal auditors: a lead auditor from outside the safety division, one operational officer, and one person with no reporting line into operations (corporate safety, finance, a volunteer officer or a peer from another department). Documents requested 10 working days earlier and read before day one.

Rules of thumb: 25 interviews in a 150 to 400 member department (the sampling table), at least eight of them volunteer members; one observation per technical category; the HSO is interviewed, not consulted, and does not sit in on interviews; a call takes precedence over everything on the schedule; a category that cannot be completed in five days is reported as incomplete with a date, never scored from documents alone.

Each checklist note carries its own prompts. These are asked in every interview:

1. What is your role, and how long have you been in it?
2. Tell me about the last time you did [the category’s core task]. Walk me through it as it happened.
3. What makes that go well on a good day? What gets in the way?
4. If the procedure and the real job differ, where, and why?
5. Who would you tell if you saw something unsafe tomorrow, and what would happen next?
6. Have you raised a concern, reported a near miss or stopped a task in the last year? What came back to you?
7. What one thing would you fix first?

Questions 5 and 6 are the psychological-safety measure (Edmondson, 1999)DOI and are scored on every sheet.

This chapter relies on the following legal requirements, which differ by province and territory. Check your jurisdiction’s section on each topic page before adopting it.