What a Competent Person Is Required to Be Able to Do

Why this matters

"Competent person" sounds like a compliment and reads like a skill level, which is why the second half of the definition gets dropped. 29 CFR 1926.650(b) defines it as someone capable of identifying existing and predictable hazards in the surroundings, and who has authorization to take prompt corrective measures to eliminate them. Two halves, joined by an "and". The person who can read the ground perfectly but has to phone the office before shutting a dig down is not a competent person under that definition, and every daily inspection they have signed is an inspection the standard does not recognise. That is not a technicality. The whole design of 1926 Subpart P assumes there is one person on the site whose stop decision is final and immediate, because the interval between deciding to stop and being allowed to stop is exactly the interval in which a wall comes in.

The definition, both halves, and where it comes from

The Subpart P definition at 1926.650(b) mirrors the general construction definition at 1926.32(f). Read it as two independent tests, both of which have to pass on the same human being.

Test one: identification. Can this person identify existing and predictable hazards in the surroundings, or working conditions that are unsanitary, hazardous or dangerous? Note "predictable". Recognising a tension crack that is already there is the easy half; the standard asks for the hazard that is not there yet - what the forecast rain does to this face, what the plate compactor two lanes over does to this classification, what the pile will look like on Thursday.

Test two: authorisation. Does this person have authorisation to take prompt corrective measures? Prompt is the operative word. Authority that has to be exercised through someone else is not this.

What the second half means on an org chart

Authority is a company decision, not a training outcome, and it is the half a shop can fix in an afternoon. Three things have to be true:

• The person can order work stopped and people out without approval, at any hour, with no dollar threshold and no duration threshold attached.
• The person can commit the resources the correction needs - order a box, call a haul truck, hold the crew - or has an unconditional standing authorisation to do so.
• Nobody above them can reverse the stop without the underlying condition being corrected. A stop that a project manager can wave off over the phone is a recommendation.

That last one is the one shops quietly fail. If the practical rule is "Diego can stop it, and Renee decides when it restarts on her own read," the authority is not with Diego.

The roster test, run on one crew

The crew. Three people, one 9-foot sewer lateral job.

Diego, foreman. Completed a competent-person course, can perform a visual analysis and a thumb-penetration test, reads tabulated data confidently. Company policy: any work stoppage projected over 2 hours requires the project manager's sign-off.

• Test one: pass.
• Test two: fail. The 2-hour threshold is the whole problem, because the corrections that matter here - re-classify and re-select, move the spoil, bring a box - all cost more than 2 hours.

Renee, project manager. Unrestricted authority to stop work and spend against the job. Has never performed a manual analysis and could not describe one. On site roughly one day a week.

• Test one: fail, and doubly so. The capability is absent, and the definition says "in the surroundings", which she is in for about 20 percent of the working week.
• Test two: pass.

Marcus, operator. Twenty-two years on machines, genuinely reads ground better than anyone on the crew, has called two jobs off on instinct and was right both times. No training in the classification method. No stop authority in writing.

• Test one: fail as the standard writes it. This is the one people argue about, and the argument is worth having honestly: Marcus's judgement is real and valuable, but the test is a capability to identify hazards against a defined method, and Appendix A's classification is a method with named steps. Instinct that cannot produce a class and a basis is not portable to the paperwork, the inspection, or the next person.
• Test two: fail.

Result. Three people, zero competent persons. The company holds every ingredient - the training, the authority, the field judgement - and holds them in three separate people, which under the definition is the same as holding none. Every daily inspection under 1926.651(k)(1) since the job started was performed by someone the standard does not recognise, and every soil classification under Appendix A was made by someone without the standing to make it.

The remedy, and what it costs. Diego already carries test one. What is missing is a piece of paper: a written designation naming him competent person for excavation work on this project, with the 2-hour approval threshold explicitly disapplied for stop-work and removal decisions. That is one conversation and one letter, well under an hour of the project manager's time, and it closes a condition that invalidated every inspection record on the job. The identification gap is real but smaller: Diego's manual-analysis practice needs a refresher, which is a couple of hours with a sample pile, not a course.

The reciprocal, which is worse. Designating Renee instead, because she already has the authority, produces a compliant-looking file and a site with nobody who can tell Type B from Type C. Of the two failure modes, the one with the signed designation is the more dangerous, because it stops anyone asking the question.

What the designation is not

• Not a card. No agency issues a competent-person certificate. A third-party course completion is evidence of training; the employer designates, and the designation is what makes it real.
• Not general. A person is a competent person for the hazards they can identify. Trench-competent is not scaffold-competent under 1926 Subpart L, and neither of those covers a permit-required confined space.
• Not permanent within a shift. The classification is a decision about the ground now. It is re-made, not carried forward.
• Not a qualified person. 1926.32(m) defines that separately, around demonstrated ability to resolve problems relating to the subject matter, and it is a different word doing a different job in the regulation.
• Not a substitute for an engineer. Past 20 feet of depth, or where an adjacent structure or a surcharge takes the condition outside the tabulated data, the design belongs to a registered professional engineer and no amount of competence transfers it back.

The six things Subpart P actually asks of this person

1. Classify the soil, using at least one visual and at least one manual analysis, per Appendix A. Take the material for the manual test from the spoil or from what the machine has just removed, standing at grade; do not reach into or step to an unprotected face to get a sample, which is the most common way this specific duty hurts the person performing it.
2. Re-classify when conditions change, and apply the exclusions rather than averaging around them: no soil is Type A if it is fissured, subject to vibration, previously disturbed, or part of a sloped layered system with layers dipping into the cut at 4 horizontal to 1 vertical or steeper. Water freely seeping from a face puts the material in Type C outright.
3. Handle layered ground by its weakest layer, unless a more stable layer lies under a less stable one, in which case each layer may be classified individually. Classifying a sand seam by the clay above it is the trap this clause exists to close.
4. Inspect daily under 1926.651(k)(1), prior to the start of work and as needed throughout the shift, and after every rainstorm or other hazard-increasing occurrence.
5. Remove exposed employees under 1926.651(k)(2) where there is evidence of a possible cave-in, indications of failure of protective systems, hazardous atmospheres or other hazardous conditions, until the necessary precautions have been taken. Removal first, diagnosis after.
6. Monitor water removal equipment under 1926.651(h)(2) wherever it is in use, and recognise when a condition has left their authority entirely.

On the manual analysis itself, Appendix A gives the accepted methods - plasticity and thread, dry strength, thumb penetration, pocket penetrometer, shearvane, and a drying test - and ties the classes to unconfined compressive strength: 1.5 tons per square foot or greater for Type A, more than 0.5 and less than 1.5 for Type B, 0.5 or less for Type C. Run the test on the material rather than on the memory of last week's material on the same street.

Making the authority visible

The delegation is only worth what the crew believes about it, so it has to be visible to them and not just filed.

• Written, named, and scoped. Person, project, hazard scope, and an explicit statement that stop-work and employee-removal decisions require no further approval.
• Said out loud at the pre-job briefing, in front of the crew, by whoever normally holds the purse. A crew that has watched a stop get overruled once will not test it again.
• A named alternate. The competent person takes days off, and an excavation open on a day with no designated competent person on site is an excavation with no inspection.
• A stop that costs nothing personally. If the last person to stop a dig got a hard conversation about the schedule, the designation is decorative. The measurable version of this is simple: count the stops in a year. Zero stops on a shop that runs open cuts regularly is not a sign of good ground.

How to verify

Run the two-part test on paper, by name, for every project that has an open excavation. Ask each designated person three questions and check the answers against the file rather than against the culture: who told you in writing that you hold this, what is the largest correction you can order without a call, and what did you classify the material as this morning and by which two methods. A designation that survives all three is real. One that fails the third is a designation whose holder has stopped doing the inspection and started signing it.

References

• 29 CFR 1926.650(b), definitions for Subpart P, including competent person and registered professional engineer
• 29 CFR 1926.32(f) and 1926.32(m), the general construction definitions of competent person and qualified person
• 29 CFR 1926.651(k), inspections by a competent person and removal of exposed employees; 1926.651(h)(2), monitoring of water removal equipment
• 29 CFR 1926 Subpart P Appendix A, soil classification, including the visual and manual analysis requirement, the Type A exclusions, and the layered-system rule
• See related: What the Twenty-Foot Line Changes About Who Designs It; How to Run a Daily Excavation Inspection That Would Hold Up