PHASCORP is a health and safety consulting firm that builds, audits and maintains occupational health and safety
management systems for Ontario employers. Consulting is our largest service line, and it is delivered by the same team that certifies your operators, which means the programmes we write reflect the equipment and the hazards your workers actually encounter.
We have supported more than 1,200 organisations across warehousing and distribution, manufacturing, aerospace,
construction and railway operations, and we hold active contracts with federal, provincial and municipal government clients.
Request a scoping call: (647) 564-6824
Compliance is the minimum standard. Three accreditations carry commercial value.
Every Ontario employer is required to meet the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Meeting it confers no advantage; it avoids a penalty. Three accreditations do more, and each answers a different commercial question.
COR 2020 answers the question of access to work. The Certificate of Recognition is a national, audit-based accreditation confirming that a health and safety management system is fully implemented and verified through external audit. It has become a prequalification condition for many Ontario municipalities, transit and infrastructure agencies, and large general contractors. COR consulting and auditing starts from $999.
Supporting Ontario’s Safe Employers answers the question of recognition. The Ministry programme accredits management systems and recognises employers who have implemented one successfully. Recognised employers may describe themselves as recognised by Ontario’s Chief Prevention Officer, and recognition may lead to eligibility for financial incentives from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.
ISO 45001 answers the question of international acceptance. It applies where an organisation operates across provinces or borders, where a customer or corporate parent specifies an international standard, or where ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 is already held and safety should be integrated rather than maintained separately.
Both COR 2020 and ISO 45001 are pre-accredited standards under Supporting Ontario’s Safe Employers, so work completed for either carries forward into recognition rather than beginning again.
Choosing between COR 2020 and ISO 45001
| COR 2020 | ISO 45001 |
Appropriate when growth depends on | Ontario tenders and general contractor prequalification | International or cross-border customers |
Typical timeline | 8 to 18 months from a standing start | 6 to 12 months with an existing system |
Certificate validity | Three years, internal audits in years two and three | Three years, surveillance audits in years one and two |
Pre-accredited under Safe Employers | Yes | Yes
|
Ontario’s Minister of Labour has directed that equivalency between ISO 45001:2018 and COR 2020 be maintained, which allows either standard to support the same provincial recognition pathway.
Consulting services
Assessment and audit. Gap assessment against the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the regulations applicable to your sector, workplace inspections, and independent auditing of your management system. Findings are delivered in writing with corrective actions prioritised by risk, and we train your staff on the actions identified rather than leaving a report behind.
Programme and policy development. Health and safety policies, programmes and management system documentation written to your operations, equipment and sector regulation. This includes hazard-specific procedures, workplace violence and harassment programmes, emergency response plans, contractor management, training matrices, inspection schedules and hazardous energy control procedures.
Outsourced and fractional safety leadership. Qualified safety professionals placed on a full-time, part-time, casual, project-based or fly-in basis, on site or virtually. For multi-site employers, we build a single management system and adapt it to each location, so a network of facilities is audited against one system rather than several inconsistent ones.
Incident investigation and regulatory response. Root cause investigation, corrective action, and compliance planning in response to Ministry of Labour orders and work stoppages.
Specialist assessment. Machine safety and guarding assessment, hazardous energy control programmes and machine specific lockout placards, ergonomic assessment for office and industrial environments, and custom safety training
development.
Corporate and multi-site programmes
A substantial share of our consulting work is delivered for corporate clients operating more than one site, more than one shift, or both. These engagements share a common requirement: one standard, applied consistently, evidenced identically at every location.
We build a single management system, adapt it to each site’s equipment and hazards, and audit against one framework rather than several. Where an organisation has grown by acquisition and inherited three or four different safety
programmes, consolidating them is usually the first piece of work.
Corporate engagements are scoped around your operating calendar. Training that forms part of the programme is delivered across day, afternoon and night shifts, including weekends by arrangement, so that a plant or distribution centre can bring an entire workforce to standard without stopping production.
Contractor management sits inside this. Where third-party crews work alongside your own, the programme has to define whose procedures apply, how competency is verified before a contractor arrives on site, and who holds the records afterwards. This is among the most commonly cited weaknesses in a customer prequalification audit.
What cannot be delegated
Health and safety liability cannot be transferred to a consultant, and any provider who suggests otherwise is describing something that does not exist.
Employers and constructors cannot contract out of their statutory duties under sections 23, 25 and 26 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. A consultant may advise, develop programmes, assess hazards, deliver training and, where genuinely given charge of the workplace and authority over workers, act as a supervisor. The work transfers. The legal responsibility does not.
We establish this at the outset of every engagement, because a programme built on the opposite assumption fails at the moment it is most needed.
Cost
Consulting is quoted per engagement, because cost follows scope rather than headcount. The determining factors are the
number of sites, the maturity of your existing documentation, whether you are working toward COR 2020 or ISO 45001, and
how much on-site presence is required.
Retainers suit ongoing compliance management. Fixed-scope pricing suits a gap assessment or audit preparation. Day rates suit defined project work. COR consulting and auditing starts from $999.
Smaller employers are not excluded by this. A business with a single site and fifteen workers has a narrower obligation than a six-facility network, and the engagement should be priced to match. Where the requirement is a written policy and programme, a hazard assessment and a training matrix, that is a defined piece of work with a defined cost rather than an
open retainer.
Request a scoping call: (647) 564-6824 or info@phascorp.com
Sectors we serve
Warehousing and distribution, manufacturing, aerospace, construction and railway operations form our core, being workplaces where lift truck, working at height, hazardous energy and hazardous materials risks converge and where a Ministry inspection carries substantial cost. We also serve transportation and logistics, food processing, healthcare, municipal services, government and retail.
A health and safety consultant closes the gap between what the Occupational Health and Safety Act requires and what a workplace is actually doing. In practice, this means assessing your position against the Act and the regulations applicable to your sector, identifying the gaps an inspector or auditor would find first, writing the programmes that close them, training your people to operate those programmes, and verifying a year later that the system still works.
General occupational health and safety consulting, COR 2020 and ISO 45001 consulting, Supporting Ontario’s Safe Employers accreditation support, outsourced and fractional safety officers, safety programme and policy development, workplace inspections and audits, incident investigation, Ministry of Labour order and work stoppage response, ergonomic assessment, machine guarding and hazardous energy assessment, and custom training development.
Section 25 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act sets employer duties. The provision governing the others is clause 25(2)(h), which requires an employer to take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of a worker. Clause 25(2)(c) requires competent persons as supervisors. Where more than five workers are regularly employed, clause 25(2)(j) requires a written health and safety policy and clause 25(2)(k) requires a programme to implement it.
Section 1(1) defines a competent person as someone qualified because of knowledge, training and experience to organise the work and its performance, familiar with the Act and the regulations that apply to the work, and having knowledge of any potential or actual danger to health or safety in the workplace. All three conditions must be met. Appointing a supervisor who fails any one of them is itself a contravention.
No. Employers and constructors cannot contract out of their statutory duties under sections 23, 25 and 26 of the Act. A consultant carries out the work; the employer retains the legal responsibility.
Yes. Many of our clients have no internal safety function, or have one person carrying safety alongside operations or human resources. We provide outsourced and fractional safety leadership, with a qualified professional running the compliance programme at a fraction of the cost of a permanent appointment.
Yes. We build a single management system and adapt it to each site’s equipment and hazards, so that a network of facilities is audited against one system rather than several assembled independently.
Consulting is quoted per engagement, since cost follows scope rather than headcount. COR consulting and auditing starts from $999. Retainers, fixed-scope pricing and day rates are available depending on the nature of the work.
Consulting is delivered nationally, across all Canadian provinces, on site and virtually. On-site training and consulting are delivered throughout the service area, within approximately 200 kilometres of Brampton, covering the Greater Toronto Area, Peel, Halton, York, Durham, Hamilton, Niagara, Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, Barrie and London. Our head office is in Mississauga and our training centre is at 170 Wilkinson Road, Brampton.
Yes. Our client base includes national retail, distribution, manufacturing and government organisations, and a substantial share of our work is delivered for employers operating multiple sites or multiple shifts. Corporate engagements are scoped around your operating calendar rather than ours.
Yes. A single-site employer has a narrower obligation than a multi-facility network, and the engagement is scoped and priced accordingly. Where the requirement is a written policy and programme, a hazard assessment and a training matrix, that is a defined piece of work rather than an open-ended retainer.
Yes. Contractor management covers whose procedures apply where third-party crews work on your site, how contractor competency is verified before arrival, and who retains the records. It is among the most commonly cited weaknesses in customer prequalification audits.
Yes, and the connection matters. The consultant who writes your health and safety programme comes from the same team that certifies your operators, so your training reflects your documented procedures rather than a generic curriculum.