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Which written safety programs does your warehouse need?

There is no single OSHA rule that says "a warehouse needs these programs". What exists is a set of standards that switch on when a facility does a particular thing: operate a lift truck, keep a chemical with a safety data sheet, service a conveyor. Answer 14 questions about your building and this page lists the written programs those standards ask for, each with the clause behind it. Only 3 of them apply to every warehouse whatever you answer, which is fewer than most checklists claim. The result is shown here, in full, with no email required.

Your facility

0 of 14 answered

  • Does anyone operate a forklift, order picker, reach truck, or powered pallet jack?

    Any truck that is powered and carries or lifts a load counts, including walk-behind electric pallet jacks.

  • Are hazardous chemicals stored or used in the building?

    If a product in the building has a safety data sheet, the answer is yes. Cleaning chemicals and shrink-wrap adhesives count.

  • Are electric lift truck batteries charged or changed on site?

    A dedicated charging area, a battery change station, or opportunity charging at the dock all count.

  • Do employees service, clean, or clear jams on powered equipment?

    Conveyors, balers, compactors, dock levelers, and shrink wrappers. If someone reaches into a machine that can start up, the answer is yes.

  • Are flammable liquids stored in the building?

    Paints, aerosols, solvents, fuel for equipment, or anything in a flammable storage cabinet.

  • Are portable fire extinguishers provided for employees to use?

    1910.157 covers extinguishers provided for the use of employees, so the ones on the wall that anyone is expected to grab count. Answer no if the building keeps none at all, or if the ones it keeps are not meant for employees, which is the next question.

  • Are extinguishers kept in the building that employees are not meant to use?

    Extinguishers there for the fire department, or for a designated response team only, with everyone else told to evacuate on the alarm. This is a route through 1910.157(a) rather than a way out of the section: where extinguishers are provided but not intended for employee use, and the employer has an emergency action plan and a fire prevention plan meeting 1910.38 and 1910.39, only paragraphs (e) and (f) apply, which are the inspection, maintenance and testing of the extinguishers themselves.

  • Do you rely on a written policy of immediate and total evacuation instead of employees using extinguishers?

    This is the exemption in 1910.157(b)(1), and it is narrow. It holds only where the policy is written, requires immediate and total evacuation on the alarm, includes an emergency action plan and a fire prevention plan meeting 1910.38 and 1910.39, and no extinguishers are available in the workplace at all. It does not hold where another standard in Part 1910 requires an extinguisher to be provided, and one does if you store flammable liquids: 1910.106(d)(7)(i)(a) puts a 12-B extinguisher within 10 feet of the door of a storage room. Answer yes only if all of that is true.

  • Does the building have a process safety management process, hazardous waste operations, or grain handling?

    1910.38 does not require a plan by itself: it applies only when another standard in Part 1910 requires one, and these are the three that reach a warehouse. Process safety management, which usually means anhydrous ammonia refrigeration at or above the threshold quantity listed in appendix A to 1910.119, requires a plan for the whole plant (1910.119(n)). Grain handling requires one (1910.272(d)). And a hazardous substance release your people would evacuate from rather than respond to requires one to claim the exemption in 1910.120(q)(1). Two smaller routes: a fire alarm delayed more than 30 seconds (1910.164(e)(3)), and the two extinguisher answers above.

  • Do you have a loading dock where trailers are spotted at doors?

    Any dock where a trailer is backed in and employees or trucks drive into it.

  • Is welding, cutting, brazing, or torch work done in the building?

    Count work done by contractors as well as by your own maintenance staff.

  • Do you offer hazardous materials for shipment?

    If your facility prepares, packages, marks, or signs shipping papers for anything with a UN number, the answer is yes.

  • Do outside contractors or temporary agency workers work on the floor?

    Anyone working in your building who is not on your payroll, including third-party maintenance and staffing agency labor. Answered on its own this adds nothing to the list, because no 1910 standard asks for a written program merely because they are there. It matters in combination: the hazard communication program, the energy control procedures and the emergency action plan review all have to reach them.

  • Did the company have more than 10 employees at any time in the last calendar year?

    Company-wide peak headcount, not headcount at this one building.

What OSHA expects in writing

3 written programs

14 questions are still unanswered, so this list will grow as you work through them. Only the first 3 apply to every warehouse whatever the answers.

Every warehouse

  • PPE hazard assessment, with written certification

    29 CFR 1910.132(d)(2)

    A written certification that the hazard assessment was done, naming the workplace, the person certifying it, and the date. A verbal assessment does not satisfy this.

    See the template

  • Exit route and egress maintenance

    29 CFR 1910.37(a)

    Exit routes kept unobstructed and free of anything that could block them, which in a warehouse means a housekeeping procedure someone owns.

    See the template

  • Material storage and stacking procedure

    29 CFR 1910.176(b)

    Stored material stacked, blocked, interlocked, and limited in height so it is stable and cannot slide or collapse.

    See the template

Take this list away as a PDF

Your answers, the programs they turn on, and the CFR citation for each one, laid out to hand to a manager.

The PDF downloads straight away and lands in your inbox too. Four short emails follow over two weeks, each with a one-click unsubscribe.

How it is calculated

The mapping is a plain rules table, not a model: each question switches on a fixed set of programs, and a program that several questions point at appears once. Answering no never removes a program from the baseline group, because those 3 apply regardless. One question, the one about contractors and temporary workers, switches nothing on by itself: no 1910 standard asks for a written program merely because they are on the floor, and the honest answer is to say so rather than invent a row for it.

What is not on the baseline list, and why. Two of the standards a warehouse checklist usually calls mandatory decide for themselves whether they apply. 1910.38(a) requires an emergency action plan only when another standard in Part 1910 requires one, and 1910.39(a) says the same of a fire prevention plan, so a plain warehouse with no process safety management, no hazardous waste operations and no grain handling may have no standard in play that asks for either. 1910.157 is scoped the same way: it covers extinguishers provided for the use of employees. Those three sit behind their own questions now, and each one prints the sentence that decides it, quoted from the standard, so you can read the condition rather than take this page's word for it.

Every citation here is copied from the library template named beside it, and a unit test in this repo re-reads the template data on every build to confirm the clause is one that template actually cites. That is deliberate: it makes an invented citation a failing test rather than a plausible-looking line on a page.

The one exception is injury and illness recordkeeping. 29 CFR Part 1904 is a reporting rule rather than a procedure, so no SOP template cites it, and its clause was read directly from the eCFR text instead. The three sentences quoted beside the conditional programs were read there too, on 2 September 2026 against title 29 issue 2026-08-31, and scripts/tools-cfr-check.mjs re-fetches every section this page cites, in both titles, and fails if a stored sentence is no longer in the paragraph it names or a paragraph label no longer resolves.

Source: eCFR, 29 CFR 1904.1, partial exemption for employers with 10 or fewer employees. Read 29 August 2026. If OSHA changes the page, this one changes with it.

Source: eCFR, 29 CFR Part 1910 subpart E, exit routes and emergency planning. Read 2 September 2026. If OSHA changes the page, this one changes with it.

This is a starting point built from the federal general industry standards, and it is not legal advice. It covers what the WarehouseSOP library spans, which is federal 29 CFR 1910 and the DOT hazmat rules a warehouse touches. It does not cover confined space entry, process safety management for refrigeration, local fire code, or anything specific to your industry classification, and it asks about a building rather than walking it: a question answered wrong puts a program on the list or leaves one off. A state plan state may impose more than the federal standard and often does. Have a qualified safety professional review the result against your facility. See the warehouse SOP templates for what each program looks like written down.

Templates this leads into

A rate or a due date tells you where you stand. The written procedure is what closes it. These are the library entries this tool points at.

  • EmergencyRev 1

    Emergency Evacuation

    Facility evacuation procedure covering alarm recognition, primary and secondary egress routes...

    Regulatory references
    7 CFR refs
    Sections
    8 sections
    Review cadence
    annual review
  • PPERev 1

    PPE Hazard Assessment and Certification

    How to run and document the workplace PPE hazard assessment: build an area and task inventory, walk each one...

    Regulatory references
    6 CFR refs
    Sections
    8 sections
    Review cadence
    annual review
  • HazmatRev 1

    Hazard Communication: GHS Labels and SDS Access

    Warehouse hazard communication procedure covering the written HazCom program...

    Regulatory references
    4 CFR refs
    Sections
    8 sections
    Review cadence
    annual review
  • Lockout/TagoutRev 1

    Lockout/Tagout Application and Removal

    Step-by-step application and removal of lockout/tagout energy controls for servicing and maintenance of machines and...

    Regulatory references
    4 CFR refs
    Sections
    7 sections
    Review cadence
    annual review

Browse all the warehouse SOP templates or start from Emergency.

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