Every safety professional knows what the Certified Safety Professional (CSP) certification is as it is one of the three gold standards. Along with the CSP is the Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) and the Certified Hazardous Materials Manager (CHMM). Your chances of getting more pay and a better job increase as you become an expert and obtain these certs.
Depending on your journey as a safety pro, you might have different requirements to obtain the CSP.
You will need:
- A bachelor’s degree
- Four years of safety, health, and environment experience, at least 50% of which is/was preventative, professional level work with breadth and depth of safety duties.
- A BCSP Qualified Credential:
- ASP
- GSP
- TSP
- CIH
- others, Check BCSP website for all qualifying credentials
- Pass the CSP exam
For me I didn’t have a qualifying credential so I needed to obtain my Associate Safety Professional (ASP) certification.
For the ASP you will need:
- a bachelor’s degree in any field or an associate in safety, health, or the environment
- one year of safety, health, and environment experience, at least 50% of which is/was preventative, professional level work with breadth and depth of safety duties.
- Pass the ASP exam
I heard that they were changing the exam format and content so I quickly decided to take the exams. First up was the ASP and I scheduled it out for 2 weeks after I made my decision. I decided to study for 8-9 hours of the day before and after work and before bed.
I found the following resources very helpful
Books:
- Safety Professional’s Reference and Study Guide by David Yates
- Safety and Health for Engineers by Roger Brauer
Apps:
- Pocket Prep – mobile app ($19.99/month)
Other resources:
I used PocketPrep to answer about 40-50 questions a day then had the app track my weaknesses. I did not focus on subjects that I was strong in, but only on the areas that I was weak in.
The BCSP provides a ASP blueprint of the current examination with the subjects broken down with percentage allocations.
- Domain 2 – Safety Programs and Concepts – 25%
- Domain 4 – Fire Prevention and Protection – 12%
- Domain 6 – Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Health – 12%
- Domain 8 – Training, Education, and Communication – 11%
- Domain 1 – Mathematical Calculations – 10%
- Domain 5 – Emergency Preparedness and Response – 10%
- Domain 3 – Ergonomics – 8%
- Domain 7 – Environmental Management – 7%
- Domain 9 – Legal – 5%
Looking at the breakdown, Domains 2, 4, 6 are 49% of the exam. Add Domain 8 and that’s just 60% of the exam. Your focus should be to nail 95% of the questions in those 4 domains. The pass rate for the ASP is a 114/175 which is a 65%. There are 200 questions and 25 are fillers that are not actually graded. If you do really well on domains 2, 4, 6, 8 and do decent on the others then you will pass.
I won’t lie, I was freaking out because I had little time and trying to cram all this information was tough. For me, my weakness was in some aspects of Domain 2 and 8 covering the construction side like trenching, excavations, working at heights, machine guarding, PITs, hoisting, rigging, and scaffolding so that was the majority of my focus. In Domain 8, memorizing the different training styles and understanding the principles of adult learning was very important as well. Thanks to my job I was pretty confident on the other domains.
My wife knew that I was freaking out but she was my best support person. She would leave notes on the door and on my iPad to make sure that I was gonna make it. It’s okay to freak out. Nobody wants to fail, but you also have to understand that you can only learn so much so you have to make realistic expectations and goals based on your situation.
So, the day before your exam, you should take a break. Don’t even do any crazy learning, just relax and go do the things that relieve your stress. For me it was to hang out with some friends and play games. Trust me, trying to cram your brain with more content is gonna make it worse for you and you won’t retain a thing. You’ll only waste time and you’ll be even more stressed out.
On the day of your exam, you will need to drive to your Pearson Vue Testing Center to take the exam. Make sure you have the correct date/time, and leave extra time for driving to the testing center. You should account for rush hour, traffic, and accidents so plan to get there about 30 minutes earlier than the exam time.
During my exam day, there was an accident and thankfully I left an hour earlier because I made it just 30 minutes before the exam. Anyways, I get there and there were a bunch of others that wanted to take exams. It was physicians, accountants, EMTs, and others. We all stand there and find out that the testing center is having IT issues and cannot get into their systems. People were freaking out and the testing center had no idea when they were going to get their system back online. We were warned that it could take hours and that it would be best to reschedule their exams. For me it wouldn’t be an issue, but I also did not want to reschedule and take another day off work. For the physicians, they can only take this exam once a year so they were upset as all hell. Someone even flew from another state to take this exam. This went on for 2 and half hours, and I watched as people slowly trickled out of the room as they had given up. We had about half the room left and as soon as I got up to use the restroom, they announced that their systems had been fixed and they can start getting people into the exam rooms. I was so happy, but I was stressed out that I couldn’t exam that I went into this exam stressed.
I cannot go into details about the exam, but below are some tips that was very helpful
- Bring snacks and use your breaks. You get 5 hours and have unlimited unscheduled breaks. This is plenty of time.
- Bring tums if your stomach gets upset from getting anxious.. bring fruits, oats, peanuts. Don’t bring greasy food or food high in carbs as that will make you sleepy.
- On the first pass of the exam, answer all the questions that take you less 5 seconds.
- Flag the questions that you don’t know or can’t answer as quickly. These will usually be long scenarios or math questions.
- On your second pass of the exam, focus on the flagged questions and depending on how much time is left, you can spend a little more time.
- If you truly don’t know, make an educated guess but don’t change the answer later unless you truly think you didn’t read the question correctly.
- Read each question carefully and be careful for double negatives or how the question is worded. These are usually what trick people and they get the question wrong.
- If you’re given a big prompt or scenario, read the last sentence of the prompt to understand what the question is before you’re reading the scenario. This will help you understand what to look for in the scenario as you’re reading it.
- The exam is all multiple choice so if you can try to eliminate half and then take a stab at an educated guess.
On my first pass of the exam, it took about an hour and half and I flagged 12 questions. I took a break, ate some snacks, drank some water, then went to the restroom. After the restroom, I went back into the testing room to finish the flagged questions. The flagged questions took me about 35 minutes and I still had about 2 and half hours left in the exam. I took a third pass to double check my answers and saw that I didn’t have to change any answers. I submitted my exam and I felt confident, but also was not sure if I had passed.
As I got up, another person finished their exam as well. I asked the other person about which exam they took and they told me that they took the ASP as well. I told them that I hope we both pass. We got to the front and the helper was waiting for our papers to print to show if we passed or failed. Out came two papers, one with 2 lines and 1 with a huge table. I received a paper with the one sentence and the other person with the huge table. I thought I had failed, but on that paper it read, “Congratulations! You have pass the ASP examination. You will receive credentialing information from BCSP within 30 days.” I couldn’t believe it, but I felt so relieved. I also felt really bad for the other person, because that meant he did not pass. I did not say anything and I grabbed my things out of the locker and left. I called my wife to tell her the great news.
I was happy that I had passed, but I was only halfway through my journey. I still needed to pass the big boy.. the CSP. I quickly signed up for the exam and waited for the approval. It took about a week, but I was approved and I set my date to be 2 weeks out. I heard that you should take the CSP immediately after your ASP because the content is pretty much the same. Now the CSP format is a bit different as the focus more program management, safety principles, risk management, and there’s less math.
- Domain 1 – Advanced Application of Safety Principles – 25%
- Domain 2 – Program Management – 25%
- Domain 3 – Risk Management – 15%
- Domain 6 – Occupational Health and Applied Science – 10%
- Domain 7 – Training – 10%
- Domain 5 – Environmental Management – 6%
- Domain 4 – Emergency Management – 9%
Wow, just the first three domains are 65% of the exam. This means that you need to focus on those and not so much the others. I did the same studying technique by going through John Newquist videos, PocketPrep, and searching up more information on Risk Management, MOC, and management leadership techniques. The CSP version of the PocketPrep has a mock exam and I decided to take that. My first mock exam was a 84% and I figured that was pretty good to go and the next day I played games.
Exam day I was nervous. I was nervous out of nowhere because I thought I would fail even though I did well on the mock exam and been answering the PocketPrep questions at 90% and higher. I told my wife that I would run away if I failed. Of course she thought I was an idiot and left me this special sticky note..
So, I drove out to the testing center and this time it was in this fancy building with 30 floors. I get up to the 19th floor and I arrive at the center. Same environment as the previous one, you have to sign in and get your fingerprints and photo taken.
I used the same test taking tips as last time, but this time I flagged about 18 questions and took 2 breaks in between. I got to the front and saw the paper with 2 lines and I was relieved again. I passed the CSP.
Of course had to call my wife, but decided to start the conversation all worried and sad, then I flipped the script and said that I passed. Hahahaha. She thought I failed. Anyways, this was quite the journey. This designation was a personal and professional goal of mine, and I was never a good test taker, but if I could do it then you guys out there can as well. Good luck future test takers and I hope you will join me soon.
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