Does OSHA 10 Expire: Four Places That Say Yes

Turn an OSHA 10 card over. There is a course end date, a trainer's name, an Authorizing Training Organization, and on the plastic ones a QR code. There is no expiration date, because OSHA does not print one. Then a gate in Queens turns you away, a Reno foreman tells you your card is stale, and a Connecticut payroll clerk asks for something dated within five years of the day the job broke ground. All three are reading a real rule. None of the rules is on the card.

Every rule quoted below was read in the original on September 6, 2026: the OSHA Outreach program pages, two subchapters of Nevada Revised Statutes, Connecticut General Statutes 31-53b, Philadelphia's contractor licensing conditions, and the New York City Department of Buildings service notices behind Local Law 196. Section numbers and links are attached to each. The wording is the whole story here, and the summaries of it tend to be wrong in the same direction.

The federal card never expires, and the record behind it lasts five years

Everything OSHA says on this fits in a few lines on the Outreach Training Program page, and they are worth reading exactly. To get a card reissued you "reach out to the trainer who conducted the class, or if you completed training online, contact the online provider." Then the limit: "Cards cannot be issued if completed 5 years ago." Then the reason: "OSHA does not keep records of Outreach training classes conducted by authorized trainers."

That five-year line gets read as an expiration rule constantly. It is not one, and the difference decides what you do next. It is a records rule. Each authorized trainer is "required to maintain records on their training for a period of five years," so past that point nobody is left who can vouch for the class and no card can be printed. On the underlying question OSHA is not ambiguous at all: "The student course completion cards in Construction, General Industry, Maritime and Disaster Site do not have an expiration date." The card you already hold does not go void on its fifth birthday. It becomes the only copy that will ever exist.

Two more lines from the Outreach FAQ close the loop. "For privacy reasons, OSHA does not provide individual verification of student course completion cards or authorized trainer cards," and the agency "does not operate, maintain or acknowledge any national database websites to verify plastic or paper student course completion cards." Verification runs through the trainer, or through the QR code on the back of a plastic card, which reaches the OTI Education Center that processed it.

One card in the program does carry an expiration date, and it is not yours. Authorized trainer cards show the trainer's authorization expiration on the front. OSHA also used to date Maritime student cards and stopped: "As of April 1, 2019, Maritime student course completion cards do not expire. Training completed before this date remains valid."

So the federal answer is that a replacement is a five-year window and a retake is available forever. Everything below this line is somebody else's rule.

Nevada expires the card in two industries and leaves construction alone

Nevada is the state cited most often for OSHA card expiration, and the citation usually points at the wrong subchapter.

NRS 618.983, the construction section, is a hiring clock and nothing more. A construction worker other than a supervisory employee must obtain an OSHA-10 completion card "not later than 15 days after the date a construction worker other than a supervisory employee is hired," and a supervisory employee has the same 15 days for an OSHA-30. No expiration appears anywhere in that section.

The expiration language lives in the two later subchapters. NRS 618.9911 covers the entertainment industry and NRS 618.9929 covers convention services, and both carry the identical sentence: "Any completion card used to satisfy the requirements of this section expires 5 years after the date it is issued." Both then give two ways to renew, and the second is the one people miss. You may complete the OSHA-10 or OSHA-30 course again within the previous five years, or provide "proof satisfactory to the Division that the worker has completed continuing education within the previous 5 years consisting of job-specific training," in an amount of "not less than 5 hours" behind a 10-hour card and "not less than 15 hours" behind a 30-hour card.

Five hours of job-specific training instead of ten hours of general awareness. If you rig stages in Las Vegas or set up a convention floor, that is a materially cheaper renewal than the retake most people assume, and the statute puts it in the same subsection as the expiration.

The only exemption the entertainment subchapter writes is a narrow one. NRS 618.9907 says those sections "do not apply to a volunteer or any other person who is not paid to perform work on a site." No carve-out for short engagements appears in the text. The card requirement itself runs from 15 days after hire, so how it lands on a two-day load-in is something the statute leaves unsaid rather than answers.

Connecticut dates the card, and hands two trades a four-hour refresher

Connecticut writes the most precise version of this rule in the country and buries it in a wage statute. C.G.S. 31-53b applies to public works contracts entered into on or after July 1, 2009 by the state or a political subdivision, and it makes the proof a payroll document: the contractor must furnish it "with the weekly certified payroll form for the first week each employee begins work on such project."

The baseline covers "any person performing the work of a mechanic, laborer or worker," who must have completed "a course of at least ten hours in duration in construction safety and health approved by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration." The section reaches only projects above the cost thresholds it borrows from subsection (h) of section 31-53, which as of September 6, 2026 exempt new construction under one million dollars and remodeling, alteration or repair under one hundred thousand. Miners may substitute new miner training under 30 CFR 46. Telecommunications employees may substitute ten hours under 29 CFR 1910.268.

Then the clause that makes Connecticut different. Since July 1, 2012, any plumber or electrician subject to the continuing education requirements of section 20-334d, who completed the ten-hour course "five or more years prior to the date such electrician or plumber begins work on such public works project," must also have completed "a supplemental refresher training course of at least four hours in duration in construction safety and health taught by a federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration authorized trainer." Not a new ten-hour class. Four hours, from an authorized trainer, and the statute says the regulations must make it include "an update of revised Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards and a review of required construction hazards training."

Subsection (c) then names a date the Labor Commissioner will accept as proof: a completion card "dated no earlier than five years before the commencement date of such public works project," or, for refresher training, one dated "not earlier than five years prior to the date such electrician or plumber begins work." Read against subsection (a), which imposes the refresher only on plumbers and electricians, that proof clause is doing more work than the requirement clause. If your card predates the project by more than five years and you are not a plumber or electrician, ask the Wage and Workplace Standards Division in writing rather than guessing. The two subsections do not line up on their face.

Enforcement is quick and personal. Under subsection (b), anyone who has not completed the course "shall be subject to removal from the worksite" if documentation does not appear "by the fifteenth day after the date the person is found to be in noncompliance." Public service company employees are exempt, as are drivers who deliver or pick up cargo and perform no other labor on the project.

Philadelphia dates the license, not the worker

Philadelphia gets filed alongside the states in most roundups and does not belong there. Its clock is attached to a license, not to a person at a gate.

Per the Department of Licenses and Inspections' published contractor requirements, every worker on a construction or demolition site must hold OSHA 10 Construction from an authorized Outreach trainer or an approved alternative, and the contractor must keep proof on the job site. No date is attached to that card. Delivery people, design professionals and their staff, special inspectors, and anyone not doing permit-regulated work fall outside the requirement.

The five-year rule lands on the supervisor. Contractors, excavation contractors and demolition contractors must identify at least one supervisory employee holding OSHA 30 Construction Safety and Health, and "the contractor must submit proof of training with the license application or renewal and the course must have been completed within the five years preceding license application or renewal." Plumbing, electrical and fire suppression contractors are excluded, as are registered Pennsylvania home improvement contractors with no separate Philadelphia license.

At renewal there is an alternative to sitting the 30 again. If L&I has already accepted an OSHA 30 certificate for that supervisor, they may instead submit 30 continuing education hours in construction or demolition safety, completed in the five years prior to renewal, from a provider approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Excavation contractors carry a second card on the same schedule: OSHA 3015, Excavation, Trenching and Soil Mechanics, available only through an OTI Education Center, renewable with 20 continuing education hours in the same subject. Any new construction, structural alteration or demolition taller than three stories, over 40 feet, or with a footprint larger than 10,000 square feet needs a designated site safety manager holding the OSHA 30, submitted to the building inspector before work starts.

If you are the supervisor the whole license hangs on, the date on your card is a company deadline rather than a personal one. That is the kind of date worth putting in a calendar three months early.

New York City stopped using the OSHA card and issues one of its own

Local Law 196 of 2017 does not extend the OSHA card. It builds a larger card and folds the OSHA hours into it.

At any site required to designate a Construction Superintendent, Site Safety Coordinator or Site Safety Manager, the Department of Buildings requires a worker to hold a Site Safety Training card showing a minimum of 40 hours of training, and a supervisor to hold a Supervisor SST card showing a minimum of 62. The May 2018 curriculum service notice sets out the arithmetic. An OSHA 30 card plus 8-Hour Fall Prevention plus 2-Hour Drug and Alcohol Awareness makes 40. An OSHA 10 card gets there the long way: 8-Hour Fall Prevention, 8-Hour Site Safety Manager Refresher, 4-Hour Supported Scaffold User and Refresher, 2-Hour Drug and Alcohol Awareness, 4 hours of general electives and 4 of specialized electives.

The card that results "expires after five years" and is renewable on showing the training hours the Department specifies, completed "in the one-year period preceding submission of a renewal application." A June 2023 reminder lists the pathways. Workers need eight hours: 4-Hour Fall Prevention plus 4-Hour Supported Scaffold User and Refresher, or 4-Hour Fall Prevention plus 2-Hour Tool Box Talks plus 2-Hour Pre-Task Safety Meeting. Supervisors need sixteen, across three permitted combinations. And the notice says the thing that saves the most money: "It is not necessary for workers or supervisors to retake full OSHA training courses; the refresher training pathways fully meet the requirements for card renewals."

Now the sentence the Department writes in capital letters, which is the reason this article exists. "Expired Site Safety Training (SST) cards are NOT renewable. SST cards can only be renewed while still active, once there is an expiration lapse, the card is no longer eligible for renewal." No grace period. Miss the date and the eight-hour refresher is worthless to you. You start over at 40 hours, or 62.

One more New York City change catches people carrying a fistful of plastic. Since July 1, 2025 the Worker Wallet is the only worker card accepted on city job sites, replacing the individual scaffold, rigging, crane and gas piping cards. The Department is explicit that it does not replace the SST card, which you carry separately.

Where the card genuinely does not age

Most jurisdictions that mandate the ten-hour course never mention a date at all. New York State's Labor Law 220-h reaches public work contracts of at least $250,000 and asks only that workers be certified "as having successfully completed a course in construction safety and health approved by the United States department of labor's occupational safety and health administration that is at least ten hours in duration." Duration, not recency. Missouri arrives at the same place from the other side. The contract language its Division of Labor Standards publishes on form PW-5 directs public bodies to require the ten-hour program under Section 292.675, RSMo, "unless they have previously completed the program and have documentation of having done so." Documentation, not recency. Nothing in that clause asks how old the card is.

That contrast is the thing to carry around. A rule that names an hour count is describing a class you once sat. A rule that names a number of years is describing a card you currently hold. The second kind is rare, and the six rows in the table above are most of it.

The date to write down is the course end date

Not the issue date, and not the day the card arrived in the mail. Every clock above runs from when the class ended. Photograph both sides of the card the week you get it and store the image somewhere that survives a phone upgrade. Write down the trainer's name, phone number and Authorizing Training Organization in the same place, because inside the five-year window those three facts are the only route to a replacement, and outside it nothing works except sitting the class again.

If you are still choosing which class to sit, the door each one opens is a separate question from how long it stays open, and that one is laid out in OSHA 10 vs OSHA 30. EPA 608, TWIC and the rest each answer the expiration question differently, so they are worth counting one at a time in does EPA 608 expire. And if Connecticut's four-hour refresher applies to you, it is because you are already inside that state's continuing education system for electricians and plumbers, which is the same machinery that decides whether your license travels at all, covered in electrician license reciprocity by state.