An OSHA self-inspection is the walk an employer does on their own premises, against the same subjects a compliance officer would look at. This covers all 41 of them — posting and records through to tyre inflation — but it gates every one, so a print shop answers nothing about confined spaces and a warehouse answers nothing about spray finishing. You can fill it in here and download a finished PDF without creating an account.
The official list is 578 questions. This is about 260.
We should say that plainly rather than let you discover it. OSHA publishes its self-inspection checklist in the Small Business Handbook, and the full version — the one most template libraries reproduce — runs to roughly 578 questions across 41 subject areas.
Nobody completes it. In practice people open it, scroll for a while, and close it, which is why a checklist that thorough ends up being less useful than a shorter one that gets finished.
This form keeps all 41 subjects and trims within them to the checks that are actually looked at on a walk. The source also repeats itself in places — several questions differ only by their number. If you are preparing for a formal audit rather than doing a routine sweep, go to the OSHA handbook itself; if you are walking the floor this morning, this is the version that gets completed.
Gating is the whole point
Every subject begins with one routing question. Answer No and the subject disappears.
That matters more here than on any other form, because the 41 subjects assume a business that welds, sprays, operates forklifts, enters confined spaces, runs abrasive wheels, handles compressed gas and maintains its own electrical systems. Almost nobody does all of that. An office answers perhaps 60 questions; a machine shop 200.
The routing questions are excluded from scoring, so "we have no spray booth" can never be recorded as a failure. That sounds obvious and it is exactly what flat checklists get wrong — people mark N/A forty times and watch their percentage fall.
What a self-inspection is and is not
It is not a substitute for anything. It does not satisfy a specific standard, it is not submitted anywhere, and doing one does not protect you from a citation.
What it does is find the things you would otherwise find during an inspection you did not choose the timing of. It is also the cheapest possible way to discover that the thing everyone assumed was fine — the eyewash nobody has flushed, the extension cord under the door, the forklift whose daily check sheet has been blank since March — is not.
The consistent advice from people who have been through an OSHA inspection is that the findings are rarely surprising in hindsight. They are things somebody had walked past for months.
The five that come up most
Across the subjects below, five recur in citation data year after year and all five are visible on a walk:
- Hazard communication — the written programme, the labels, and whether anyone can actually produce a safety data sheet when asked.
- Respiratory protection — used without a written programme, fit testing or medical evaluation behind it.
- Lockout/tagout — no written procedure for the specific machine, or locks with no tag naming a person.
- Machine guarding — guards removed because they slowed the job down, and point-of-operation exposure.
- Electrical — damaged cords, missing GFCI on temporary power, blocked or unlabelled panels, open knockouts.
Record it while you are standing in front of it
The trap on a form this long is doing the walk with a camera and writing it up afterwards. By then "electrical — No" has lost the bay number, the machine, and what was actually wrong with it, and somebody has to walk the site again to act on it.
Speak while you walk, and the document the law or the client wants writes itself. Say the finding where you find it and it lands against the right subject with the photograph attached.
Common questions
How many questions are in the OSHA self-inspection checklist?
The full version published in OSHA’s Small Business Handbook runs to roughly 578 questions across 41 subject areas. This form covers all 41 subjects in about 260 checks, gated so you only answer the subjects you have. We say so rather than implying our version is the complete list.
Is a self-inspection required by OSHA?
No specific standard requires this checklist. Several individual standards do require periodic inspections of their own — lockout/tagout procedures, powered industrial trucks, respiratory protection, emergency equipment — and a self-inspection is how most employers keep on top of those in one pass.
How often should we do one?
Annually for the full sweep is common, quarterly for higher-hazard operations, with individual items on their own statutory cycles. The useful test is whether the findings from the last one were closed before the next one starts.
Does completing this protect us from a citation?
No. It has no legal standing, it is not submitted to anyone, and a compliance officer is not bound by it. What it does is find things before somebody else does, and demonstrate that you were looking — which matters for good-faith considerations but is not a defence.
What are the most cited OSHA standards?
The top of the general-industry list has been stable for years: hazard communication, respiratory protection, lockout/tagout, machine guarding and electrical. Fall protection dominates construction. Every one of those is a subject in this form, and every one is visible on a walk.
Can I skip subjects that do not apply to us?
Yes — that is what the routing question at the top of each subject is for. Answering No removes the whole subject, and because gates are excluded from scoring it never counts against you. That is the difference between this and a flat printed list where forty N/As drag your percentage down.