An OSHA 10 or 30-hour construction card is not a license, not a certification, and not something federal OSHA requires — it is proof that you sat through a voluntary safety class taught by an OSHA-authorized trainer. Plenty of states, cities, general contractors and unions do require it anyway, which is why the card is worth having and worth understanding. This guide covers what the card does and does not do, who actually mandates it, how the required hours are built, how to find an authorized trainer and pick a legitimate format, what the class days look like, and how the card is issued and replaced — using only figures OSHA itself publishes, and saying plainly where the agency publishes no number at all.
The "OSHA 10" and "OSHA 30" that job postings ask for are classes in the OSHA Outreach Training Program — a voluntary program the agency started in 1971, which trained more than 6.51 million workers between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2025. Finish one and an OSHA-authorized trainer issues you a student course completion card. That card is all you get, and OSHA's own program FAQ sets its limit in a single line: an OSHA card is not considered a certification or license.
Three consequences follow, and they are worth knowing before you pay anyone. There is no such thing as a worker being "OSHA certified": the agency certifies neither individuals nor organizations, assigns no continuing education units to outreach classes, and authorizes rather than certifies the trainers themselves. The class does not satisfy the hazard-specific training your employer must separately give you under OSHA standards, catalogued in OSHA Publication 2254. And a card is not a job — OSHA's guidance on card fraud tells workers to beware of advertising that guarantees employment after the course.
Federal OSHA does not, and says so on every page describing the program. The demand comes from everyone else: states, municipalities, employers, unions and other organizations that wrote the card into their own rules. OSHA does not police those mandates either — whether a particular class or document satisfies a requirement is decided by the organization imposing it.
Two real statutes show how differently that can look. Nevada requires every construction worker other than a supervisory employee to obtain an OSHA-10 completion card within 15 days of being hired, and supervisory employees to obtain an OSHA-30 card in the same window; an employer whose worker cannot produce the card must suspend or terminate that worker (Nevada Revised Statutes 618.983 and 618.987). Missouri comes at it through public money instead: a contractor or subcontractor on a public works project must provide a ten-hour OSHA construction safety program for its on-site employees, who have sixty days from starting work to finish it (Section 292.675, Revised Statutes of Missouri).
Those are illustrations, not a national list, and neither says anything about the site you are standing on. The reliable answer comes from whoever is asking for the card: the general contractor, the union hall, the staffing agency, your state plan. Two things are never a barrier — you do not have to be employed to take an outreach class, and there is no minimum age.
OSHA splits the two by responsibility, not seniority: awareness training for entry-level workers on one side, supervisors and workers carrying some safety responsibility on the other. The required core does not simply get longer — it changes shape.
In the 10-hour construction class, six of the ten hours are fixed by OSHA: one hour of Introduction to OSHA, four hours of Focus Four hazards (falls alone must get at least an hour and a half), thirty minutes of personal protective equipment and thirty minutes of health hazards in construction. The trainer fills the remaining four with at least two elective topics plus any optional material, none shorter than thirty minutes.
In the 30-hour class fourteen hours are required: the same Introduction to OSHA, two hours on managing safety and health, six hours of Focus Four, two hours of personal protective equipment, two hours of health hazards, and one hour of stairways and ladders. Twelve further hours come from OSHA's elective list and must span at least six different topics; the last four are the trainer's to allocate. That is why two classes with the same name feel different — the core is fixed, the rest is chosen for the room.
OSHA does not run these classes. Authorized trainers do, after clearing prerequisite and trainer courses through the OSHA Training Institute Education Centers; a construction trainer needs five years of construction safety experience going in, and the authorization then runs four years and lapses without an update course. Before you hand over money, ask to see the trainer's card: it carries their name, an expiration date and the Authorizing Training Organization behind them, and trainers must produce proof of current authorization on request. OSHA publishes a public directory of classroom trainers and a separate list of authorized online providers — start at OSHA's Find a Trainer page.
Fraud here is common enough that OSHA runs a hotline at 847-725-7804 and takes complaints at outreach@dol.gov. Program rules forbid trainers from claiming their training is "OSHA compliant" or that it meets any OSHA standard's training requirement, and forbid legible images of completion cards in advertising. A same-day card, a guaranteed job, or a course that quietly skips contact hours is not a bargain — it is a card that will not survive one question from a safety manager.
In-person classroom instruction is OSHA's preferred delivery method and still the most common. Live video-conferencing by an authorized trainer is permitted under conditions: the Authorizing Training Organization must be notified at least seven calendar days ahead, class size is capped at twenty students unless a proctor attends throughout, and trainer and students alike keep camera and audio on for the whole class. Cellular devices may not be used to deliver or receive the training.
Self-paced online courses are a different animal. An individual authorized trainer may not run an asynchronous class at all; only OSHA-authorized online providers may, and OSHA publishes the current list by industry and class length. The agency states plainly that it neither hosts nor offers online outreach classes itself and cannot validate training from vendors outside that list — which makes checking the list the highest-value minute you will spend before paying.
Language is governed by rule, not goodwill. Trainers must teach in a language the students understand and accommodate limited vocabulary; the primary trainer must be fluent in that language or use an interpreter with an occupational safety and health background, and consecutive rather than simultaneous interpretation means the class must run at least twice as long. Outreach training in languages other than English exists — OSHA names Spanish and Polish — and the trainer directory can be searched for it. There is no OSHA-published Russian version.
OSHA counts contact hours: time actually spent on course content, not breaks, meals, attendance or an optional test. A trainer may deliver at most 7.5 contact hours per calendar day, so a 10-hour class needs a minimum of two calendar days and a 30-hour class at least four. A single session may not exceed ten consecutive hours all-in, a ten-minute break is required after every two consecutive contact hours, and any session over six hours needs a meal period of at least thirty minutes.
The class may be split into segments of at least thirty minutes across days, weeks or months, provided everything finishes within 180 calendar days of the start date unless the Authorizing Training Organization grants a written exception. To earn the card you must attend the entire class and cover every required topic and the minimum contact hours; a portion missed while a guest trainer was presenting can be made up with that same guest trainer, coordinated by the primary trainer.
There is no OSHA exam. Testing is not required, test time is not instructional time, and the judgement on whether you completed the class belongs to the trainer. Two kinds of instruction cannot count toward your hours however useful they are: CPR and first aid, and any training conducted to comply with an OSHA standard.
Your trainer must issue the completion card directly to you within 90 days of the class ending, regardless of who paid. If day 91 arrives with nothing, contact the trainer; if that goes nowhere, OSHA asks you to email outreach@dol.gov with your name, the trainer's name, the training date and location, and the class type. Trainers are encouraged but not required to hand out a certificate at the end of class to cover the gap, and whether an employer accepts one instead of the card is the employer's call.
Construction completion cards carry no expiration date — which is not the same as the knowledge staying current, and OSHA leaves the form and content of further training to the student and employer. Losing the card is survivable but narrow: a replacement is possible only if the class was taken within the last five years, only once per student per class, and only through your original trainer, who requests it from their Authorizing Training Organization. OSHA keeps no records of these classes and cannot issue a replacement itself.
OSHA publishes no price, because there is no official one. Authorized trainers and online providers are independent service providers who set their own schedules and fees, and the agency's advice is to contact several and compare. OTI Education Centers receive no OSHA funding and may charge for processing card requests, so a card-processing fee inside a course price is legitimate. Anyone quoting you "the OSHA fee" for a 10- or 30-hour class is quoting a number that does not exist.
Only hours in an authorized trainer's class earn a card. Practice questions replace nothing, and this site sells no training and issues no cards. What practice does is make those hours land: walk in already knowing what a competent person is, what the fall-protection trigger height is, and which form logs a recordable injury, and the class stops being a wall of unfamiliar vocabulary. Our OSHA construction safety practice test is 250 questions in five blocks across the same required and elective subject matter — free, in English, Spanish and Russian, with a written explanation on every answer.
Two neighbouring programs behave very differently, and the contrast is worth holding on to. EPA 608 certification is a genuine federal requirement — you must hold it to buy or handle most refrigerants, and it comes from a proctored exam rather than a class you sit through. The asbestos open-book exam in our free set is a California licensing step for contractor applicants, not an OSHA product, even though asbestos appears as a health hazard in the 30-hour curriculum. Knowing which piece of paper does what separates a worker who is prepared from one who has been sold something.
Ready to practice for the exams? The Outreach Training Program practice bank on LICENA: real-exam-style questions with a written explanation on every answer, in English, Spanish and Russian. The sample is free — no sign-up.
Try the free practice test → CSLB Law & Business