Federal OSHA does not require HVAC or plumbing workers to hold an OSHA 10 or 30 card — the Outreach program is voluntary.
Nevada requires one on construction work within 15 days of hire, four more require a 10-hour construction safety course on public works — New Hampshire and Massachusetts above a dollar threshold — and an employer can make the card a condition of employment.
There's no "OSHA certification": the card proves you completed a course, nothing more.
What OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 are (and what they are not)
OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 are course completion cards from OSHA's Outreach Training Program, and the first thing to know is what OSHA itself says about the label: "None of the courses within the Outreach Training Program is considered a certification."
A card that gets called an "OSHA cert" on the jobsite is a course completion card — not a certification.
If a course advertises an "OSHA HVAC certification," that wording is the seller's — OSHA's own materials decline it.
The program is also voluntary at the federal level.
OSHA's Outreach page states that the program "does not meet the training requirements for any OSHA standards" and is "not an OSHA requirement" — while noting that states, municipalities and others may require outreach training as a condition of employment.
That sentence is the whole picture: no OSHA mandate, but state law or your employer can still put the card in your onboarding paperwork.
The two classes split by audience, not difficulty.
The 10-hour class is intended to give workers awareness of common job-related safety and health hazards; the 30-hour class is more appropriate for supervisors or workers with some safety responsibility.
A technician doing the work is the natural fit for the 10; a lead, foreman or crew boss is who the 30 is built for.
What the card is not is the law that governs your jobsite.
OSHA's construction standards apply to construction work — and as OSHA's own wording above says, the Outreach course meets no standard's training requirements.
Four of those standards, two of which tie directly to plumbing and duct work:
| Hazard | What the standard requires | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Falls | Workers on a surface with an unprotected side or edge 6 feet or more above a lower level must be protected by guardrail systems, safety net systems or personal fall arrest systems. | 29 CFR 1926.501(b)(1) |
| Trench cave-ins | Workers in an excavation must be protected from cave-ins by a protective system, unless the excavation is entirely in stable rock or is under 5 feet deep with no indication of a potential cave-in per a competent person. | 29 CFR 1926.652(a)(1) |
| Confined spaces | Before work begins, the employer must ensure a competent person identifies all confined spaces workers may enter, and which of them are permit spaces. | 29 CFR 1926.1203(a) |
| Silica dust | The construction standard covers respirable crystalline silica exposure except where it stays below 25 µg/m³ (8-hour TWA), with a permissible exposure limit of 50 µg/m³ — the dust you make coring and cutting concrete or masonry for pipe and duct runs. | 29 CFR 1926.1153 |
The trench row ties straight to plumbing — OSHA's cave-in rule is the one relevant to plumbers doing sewer and water line work — so the safety card pairs naturally with the plumbing certifications worth getting when you are building a credential list.
Heat is the topic where the rules have not landed yet: as of September 29, 2026, there is no final federal OSHA heat standard.
OSHA proposed one on August 30, 2024, held an informal public hearing from June 16 through July 2, 2025, and extended post-hearing comments to October 30, 2025 — no final rule appears in the Federal Register.
Where the card fits, then, is next to your trade credentials rather than inside them.
EPA 608, NATE and the rest of the stack live in our guide to which HVAC certifications you need; the OSHA card is a different animal — a safety course record that complements them instead of one of them.
Which states and jobsites require OSHA 10 or OSHA 30?
Start with the state law that covers the most work: Nevada.
Under NRS 618.983, a construction worker must obtain a completion card for an OSHA 10 course not later than 15 days after the date of hire, and a supervisory employee must hold an OSHA 30 card within the same 15 days.
The requirement covers all construction in the state, not just public-works projects.
Four more state laws tie the 10-hour course to public-works jobsites:
- New Hampshire — RSA 277:5-a: on public-works contracts with a total project cost of $100,000 or more, on-site employees must have an OSHA 10-hour construction safety program.
- Massachusetts — M.G.L. c.30 §39S: workers on public-works projects estimated over $10,000 must have successfully completed a construction safety and health course approved by OSHA that is at least 10 hours in duration.
- Missouri — RSMo 292.675: contractors and subcontractors on public works must provide a ten-hour OSHA construction safety program for their on-site employees.
- Connecticut — CGS 31-53b: workers on covered public-works projects need proof they completed an OSHA-approved construction safety course of at least ten hours.
New York (Labor Law 220-h), Rhode Island, West Virginia and Philadelphia are often cited as requiring OSHA 10 as well, but our research did not verify those statutes — New York's statute page failed to load when we checked.
Treat them as unconfirmed and ask the state labor department — or the city, for Philadelphia — before you rely on them in either direction.
Then there is the employer layer.
Outreach training may be required as a condition of employment by states, municipalities or others, OSHA's page notes — which is how a card requirement reaches a shop in a state with no statute of its own.
The practical read on any posting: if OSHA 10 is listed under requirements, it is required for that job regardless of what state law says.
What shops near you ask for is easy to check — the postings on our HVAC technician jobs board list each employer's requirements.
State rules are state-specific — confirm before the job starts
What OSHA 10 costs — and whether an online card is valid
Start with what we cannot tell you: a price.
OSHA's published Outreach materials cover authorized trainers, the 10- and 30-hour class structure and how cards work; course pricing is not something our research verified, so this page quotes no dollar figure.
The classes are conducted by authorized trainers rather than by OSHA, so what you pay is a question for the trainer or online provider you book with — and one worth putting to your employer before you book, especially if the employer is the one requiring the card as a condition of employment.
On the online question, what our sources establish is narrow: OSHA's page names the original trainer or online provider as where a replacement card comes from, without distinguishing online courses from classroom ones.
Beyond that, whether an online course satisfies a given employer's requirement is not something our research established — it is that employer's call, so ask before you book.
Now the validity question, where the five-year number causes the confusion.
OSHA's Outreach page puts no expiration date on construction or general industry cards — the five-year numbers on that page are about replacement cards and provider records, not validity.
Providers keep training records for five years, and a card cannot be issued for training completed more than five years ago; past that point you are retaking the course, not renewing.
OSHA states plainly that it does not keep records of Outreach training classes conducted by authorized trainers, so a replacement runs through the original trainer or online provider rather than through the agency.
So if someone tells you your card expires, ask what they mean.
On the federal level OSHA states no expiry for construction or general industry cards — the only cards it explicitly marks as never expiring are its maritime ones.
An employer or a state can still require the course as its own condition, but that is their rule, not a federal expiration.
And if your card is older than five years, the practical constraint is not validity — it is that the provider who taught you may no longer hold the records a replacement needs.
This page is career information, not legal advice. Requirements come from OSHA, from each state's own law and from individual employers, and they change — confirm the current rule with OSHA, your state's labor department, and your employer before you act on it.