TL;DR
Construction and oilfield safety on Alberta energy sites rests on three things: a prime contractor who owns the site rules, a builder that plans hazards out of the work, and third-party safety companies for medics, monitoring and training. Part 37 of the OHS Code sets the floor, and we build the rest into the schedule before mobilization.
Why an Energy Site Changes the Safety Plan
An energy site stacks new hazards on top of the usual ones. A steel building on an oil sands lease faces the same hazards as any industrial build. Falls, dropped loads, crane picks and moving equipment still top the list. It also sits next to live process units, sour gas, flare stacks and heavy haul roads. That overlap is where construction and oilfield safety meet. The builder then inherits the owner’s site rules on top of its own program.
The rulebook depends on the ground under the site. Most Alberta energy projects answer to the provincial OHS Code. Work on federal Canada lands falls under the federal Oil and Gas Occupational Safety and Health Regulations instead. Those rules cover exploration, drilling, production, processing and transportation of oil or gas on those lands. A contractor that builds in both worlds needs one program that satisfies each, otherwise an auditor finds the gaps.
Scale adds pressure of its own. Our work at Syncrude Mildred Lake near Fort McMurray involved 3,200 tonnes of conventional steel. It also included 23 heavy-haul module lifts, the heaviest at 150 tonnes. Every one of those lifts happened inside an operating mine. We therefore wrote lift plans, exclusion zones and radio protocols into the schedule from day one.
What Does Part 37 of Alberta’s OHS Code Require on an Oil and Gas Site?
Part 37 applies to exploration, drilling and extraction of oil, gas or geothermal energy, plus the decommissioning of wells. It also makes the prime contractor responsible for site orientation, wind direction indicators, atmospheric monitoring and firefighting equipment.
Alberta changed Part 37 of the OHS Code in December 2024 through Ministerial Order 2024-12. The part now carries the title Oil, Gas and Geothermal Energy. The order also added plain definitions for rig terms such as derrick, drawworks and snubbing. Geothermal drilling, as a result, sits under the same rules as an oil well.
Three duties matter most to a builder:
- Orientation comes first. Before a new worker enters the site, the prime contractor must ensure a site-specific orientation. It covers hazards, controls, PPE, the emergency response plan and how to refuse unsafe work.
- Monitoring comes next. The site needs wind direction indicators in strategic places, visible under all light conditions. Atmospheric monitoring must also run wherever a harmful substance may exist.
- Fire response rounds it out. Firefighting equipment must sit in sufficient quantity and type wherever a fire hazard exists.
Part 37 sets the floor for every subtrade on the lease, and the builder’s own program sits on top of it. The prime contractor then audits against both.
What the Incident Data Says About Energy Sites
The best numbers come from Energy Safety Canada. ESC is the national safety association for Canada’s energy industry. Its PSI summary report covers potentially serious incidents in Alberta’s energy industry from 2019 to 2024. A PSI is a close call that could have caused a serious injury or death with a small change in circumstances.
Reports have averaged about 75 a year since 2020, with 74 filed in 2024. The most common 2024 types were struck by a falling object and contact with an object or tool. Falls to a lower level came next, and they rose by more than 50% that year. A guard rail still saved many of those workers from a worse fall.
The same report pairs close calls with real claims. For every PSI reported, the industry logs about two serious-injury WCB claims. Those claims mean 50 or more days lost, or a fatality. Two details matter for a steel crew in particular. Half of the electrical-contact PSIs involved overhead powerlines, and 70% of those counted as repeat incidents. Hydrogen sulphide also accounted for 22 of the 35 inhalation PSIs. The injured likewise include 18 construction trades helpers and labourers, so steel crews sit inside these numbers.
What Companies Did After Each Close Call
Companies then report what they changed after each PSI.
| Follow-up action after a PSI | 2019 to 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Training or re-training | 262 | 50 |
| Changed policy | 190 | 30 |
| Applied engineered controls | 134 | 23 |
| Eliminated hazard | 112 | 16 |
| Substituted equipment | 36 | 7 |
| Other | 133 | 26 |
Training tops the list in both periods. Engineering fixes and hazard elimination, in contrast, sit lower on the list. ESC calls training and policy changes soft controls. It asks industry to invest in hard controls that still work when a person makes a mistake. Near powerlines, for example, its stated best practice is flag poles, a spotter and signage. Those three act as a barrier, dedicated monitoring and a visual reminder. ESC asks for at least two such alternative controls, from different categories, wherever no direct control exists. For a builder, that means guard rails, barriers and engineered drop protection rather than another toolbox talk.
Where Do Safety Companies Fit on an Energy Project?
Safety companies fill the roles an owner cannot staff full time: medics, safety supervisors, gas monitoring, fire standby and training. The prime contractor still owns the site plan; these firms supply people, equipment and audits under it.
Each service lands on an energy build like this:
| Service | What it does on site | Typical trigger |
|---|---|---|
| On-site medic and treatment unit | First response and stabilization far from a hospital | Remote sites, long haul roads, camp-based crews |
| Safety supervisor or advisor | Permits, hazard assessments, inspections, incident reports | Multi-contractor sites, turnarounds, tie-ins |
| Gas detection and air monitoring | Personal monitors, area monitors, wind indicators | Sour gas areas, confined spaces, live process units |
| Fire suppression trailer | Standby water and foam near hot work and hydrocarbons | Hot work close to a live plant |
| Training and COR audits | Fall protection, confined space and H2S courses, system audits | Owner prequalification, COR maintenance |
Turnarounds and tie-ins are the busy season. Crews from many contractors arrive on a live plant for a few weeks, and owners then bring in outside safety staff to match. On a turnaround, the owner’s safety advisor runs the permit desk, which keeps our foremen on the steel. Remote sites lean on medics for a different reason: the nearest hospital can sit hours away by road. A medic on site also keeps a minor cut from turning into a long drive.
Why Owners Ask for a COR
Owners check one certificate before any of this starts. Alberta’s Partnerships in Injury Reduction program awards a Certificate of Recognition, or COR. An employer earns it when its health and safety management system meets the provincial standard. The province lists nine parts of that system. They run from hazard identification and controls to inspections, emergency planning and incident reporting. Certifying partners review the audits, train and certify auditors, and co-sign the certificate. Qualifying COR holders can earn up to 20% off their WCB industry rate. WCB-Alberta also counts more than 10,000 of them.
In our experience, oil sands owners ask for the COR at prequalification and then audit against it during the job. They read the certificate as proof of a working system rather than a binder. A lapsed certificate can end a bid before anyone reads the price.
How We Plan and Staff Safety on an Energy Build
We treat safety as a schedule item. Our Kearl Lake pump house was an 18,000 sq ft conventional steel building. We detailed, fabricated and erected it through freezing temperatures in Alberta’s north. Cold changes the plan: shorter shifts, warm-up rotations, ice on grating and hydraulic hoses that stiffen overnight.
MEG Energy’s Christina Lake Phase 2 covered 60,000 sq ft in total. We built the gas turbine building, steam generation plant, water treatment plant and warehouse there. The gas turbine building, for example, carries a 50-tonne overhead crane on a 90-foot span. We sequence the erection, the exclusion zones and the rigging plan around a crane that size. We make those decisions long before the initial pick.
Our energy-site checklist:
- Read the owner’s site rules first, then map our program onto them.
- Write lift plans and exclusion zones into the schedule rather than into a separate binder.
- Book medics, gas monitoring and fire standby from safety companies before mobilization.
- Deliver the Part 37 orientation to every worker on day one, subtrades included.
- Log close calls as PSIs, then fix the hazard instead of only retraining the crew.
Prefabrication cuts exposure. Every connection we bolt in the shop is one fewer connection made at height in a January wind. Modular assemblies also cut the hours crews spend on the lease. Fewer hours on site therefore means less exposure to the traffic, gas and weather risks around them. The Recognize, Respond, Respect framework from Construction Safety Week 2026 adds one rule: stop and reassess when conditions change.
What Owners Should Ask a Builder in 2026
Ask three questions before you award an energy-site package. Does the builder hold a current COR, and can it show the last audit score? Has it worked inside a live plant or mine, and who ran the lifts? Which safety companies will be on site, and who pays for standby time?
Safety on these projects costs money. ESC’s numbers, however, show where it pays back. Fewer close calls turn into 50-day claims, the WCB rate drops, and the crew goes home at the end of the shift. Plan it with the builder before mobilization, and the program runs on the schedule rather than against it.