Learning you’ll be on the receiving end of an inception from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) can be a cause for concern, but there is no need to panic if you’re armed with the right knowledge.

Tammy Clark, owner of Tammy K. Clark Companies, is an OSHA-trained consultant with more than 20 years of experience in the building trades. In this video, she tells contractors what they need to know to prepare for an OSHA inspection, from properly handling the “opening conference” protocol to what types of company policies contractors should have in place.

“That’s really important that companies have a written, stated company policy that the authorization doesn’t fall on the foreman or crew leader on site, but the authorization to handle and go through an opening conference falls directly squarely on company management — the safety director, the safety consultant or upper management,” Clark said.

Similarly, following an inspection, the OSHA inspector is to let the company know what violations may have been found — including the code — and what they’ll be recommending for citations. Clark said it’s critical that companies get on record what the inspector says, even if it’s “I’m not recommending citations at this time.”

“If something does show up down the road, we can use that and say, ‘No no no, there were no violations, we have that on record, the OSHA inspector told us there were no violations at the closing conference,’” she said. “You have to know how to handle that.”

Watch the full video here for more tips and insights from Clark. To listen and download the audio version, visit our podcast page.