Stop work authority: the law, the record and the restart

Where stop work authority is law, and where it is practice

What each provision actually says

The most prescriptive legal requirement is offshore. Operators on the US Outer Continental Shelf must include stop work authority in their safety and environmental management system (SEMS). Section 250.1930 requires procedures that ensure the capability to immediately stop work that is creating imminent risk or danger, and that grant all personnel the responsibility and authority, without fear of reprisal, to stop work or decline an assigned task when imminent risk or danger exists — defined as a condition, activity or practice that could reasonably be expected to cause death or serious physical harm, or significant environmental harm. The person in charge of the work must ensure it stops in an orderly and safe manner, and anyone told to stop must comply immediately. SWA must appear as a standard statement in every job safety analysis, be covered in orientation for new personnel and be reviewed at safety meetings. The provision came in with BSEE's revisions to the SEMS rule, published on 5 April 2013 and effective on 4 June 2013, with compliance required by 4 June 2014. eCFR: 30 CFR 250.1930, stop work authority (SWA); Federal Register: revisions to SEMS, final rule, 78 FR 20423 (5 April 2013)

It is also the only instrument we checked that names who authorises the restart and requires that decision in writing. Work may resume when the individual on the facility with ultimate work authority determines that the imminent risk or danger does not exist or no longer exists, and the decision to resume must be documented in writing as soon as practicable. Section 250.1931 requires the programme to identify who holds that authority and to ensure everyone knows, including when the responsibility shifts to someone else. Section 250.1928 requires SWA training and reviews to be documented, kept on site for 30 days and retained for two years. Its general rule is that SEMS records and documents are kept for six years except as the section provides otherwise; the written resume decision is not among the exceptions it lists, so on the text the six-year period applies to it. BSEE's separate rule for renewable energy on the Outer Continental Shelf is far briefer: the safety management system must address the methods used to monitor its implementation and maintain safety, including management of change and stop work practices, without saying what those practices must contain. eCFR: 30 CFR 250.1931, ultimate work authority (UWA); eCFR: 30 CFR 250.1928, SEMS recordkeeping and documentation; eCFR: 30 CFR 285.810, safety management systems for renewable energy on the Outer Continental Shelf

Offshore is the most prescriptive rule, not the only one. The Department of Energy's worker safety and health rule requires contractors to ensure that management at a covered workplace establishes procedures permitting workers to stop work or decline an assigned task because of a reasonable belief that it poses an imminent risk of death, serious physical harm or other serious hazard, where they believe there is insufficient time to use normal hazard reporting and abatement procedures. It also gives workers the right, without reprisal, to stop work when they discover employee exposures to imminently dangerous conditions or other serious hazards, provided the authority is exercised in a justifiable and responsible manner under the approved worker safety and health programme. Section 851.20 dates from 2006 and does not say who authorises a restart. For construction work, the rule's mandatory appendix requires that where a newly identified hazard cannot be corrected immediately, or falls outside the project's scope, the contractor or its designated representative stops work in the affected area until appropriate protective measures are established. eCFR: 10 CFR 851.20, DOE worker safety and health: management responsibilities and worker rights; eCFR: 10 CFR part 851, Appendix A, worker safety and health functional areas (construction safety)

The EPA's Risk Management Program added a provision for Program 3 chemical processes in 2024. Section 68.83(d) requires the owner or operator to give employees knowledgeable in the process, and their representatives, two authorities: to recommend to the operator in charge of a unit that an operation or process be partially or completely shut down, and to allow a qualified operator in charge to shut it down, in both cases following the operating procedures and based on the potential for a catastrophic release. Those operating procedures must already cover emergency shutdown and startup after an emergency shutdown; paragraph (d) itself says nothing about restarting. Compliance is due by 10 May 2027. In a proposed rule published on 24 February 2026, the EPA called the provision its stop work authority, said it had been intended to have facilities document existing authorities in the employee participation plan rather than create new ones, and proposed to rescind it to realign with OSHA's process safety standard. The comment period was extended to 11 May 2026. The eCFR text current to 18 September 2026 still contains the provision, and a Federal Register search on 22 September 2026 found no final rule. eCFR: 40 CFR 68.83, EPA Risk Management Program: employee participation (Program 3); eCFR: 40 CFR 68.10, EPA Risk Management Program: applicability and compliance dates; eCFR: 40 CFR 68.69, EPA Risk Management Program: operating procedures; Federal Register: EPA proposed rule, Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention, 91 FR 8970 (24 February 2026); Federal Register: EPA extension of comment period, 91 FR 16621 (2 April 2026)

Outside those rules, US federal law is narrower. OSHA's regulations on section 11(c) of the OSH Act, whose protection extends to all employees the Act covers, state that, as a general matter, the Act gives employees no right to walk off the job because of potential unsafe conditions. Protection arises where an employee with no reasonable alternative refuses in good faith to face a condition that a reasonable person would see as a real danger of death or serious injury, where there is not enough time to eliminate it through regular enforcement channels and, where possible, the employee has asked the employer to correct it. OSHA's guidance to workers adds that they should remain at the worksite until ordered to leave, and that a retaliation complaint must be made to OSHA within 30 days. eCFR: 29 CFR 1977.12, exercise of rights afforded by the OSH Act; eCFR: 29 CFR 1977.5, persons protected by section 11(c); US OSHA: workers' right to refuse dangerous work

Several OSHA standards give a stopping authority to a particular role or signal. The construction crane standard requires the operator to obey a stop or emergency stop signal irrespective of who gives it. The shipyard fire watch standard requires fire watches to be authorised to stop work if necessary and restore safe conditions within the hot work area. The construction power line standard requires the one person directing the procedures for crane work closer than the minimum approach distance to have the authority to stop work at any time to ensure safety; if a problem occurs in implementing the procedures, or shows they are inadequate to prevent electrocution, operations must stop safely and resume only after new procedures are developed or the line is deenergised and visibly grounded or relocated. At an emergency response to a hazardous substance release, the designated safety official has the authority to alter, suspend or terminate activities they judge to be an IDLH condition — an atmosphere immediately dangerous to life or health — or to involve an imminent danger. eCFR: 29 CFR 1926.1417, crane operation, including stop signals; eCFR: 29 CFR 1915.504, fire watches (shipyard employment); eCFR: 29 CFR 1926.1410, power line safety closer than the Table A zone; eCFR: 29 CFR 1910.120, hazardous waste operations and emergency response

The process safety management standard requires operating procedures to cover emergency shutdown — the conditions that require it and the assignment of shutdown responsibility to qualified operators — and startup after an emergency shutdown. OSHA's 2022 stakeholder notice on modernising that standard listed expanding its employee participation paragraph to include stop work authority among the changes it was considering. A Federal Register search on 22 September 2026 found no OSHA proposed rule on process safety management published since that notice. eCFR: 29 CFR 1910.119, process safety management; US OSHA: PSM stakeholder meeting notice, 87 FR 53020 (30 August 2022)

We found the US provisions above by reading the rules named and by an eCFR full-text search for the phrase ‘stop work’ on 22 September 2026. It returned 83 results, most of them about government contracts; the offshore, Department of Energy, shipyard and power line provisions were among them. A phrase search misses rules worded differently — the EPA provision says ‘shut down’, and the emergency response rule ‘alter, suspend, or terminate’ — so treat this as what we found rather than a complete list of US rules.

In Great Britain the duty is to have procedures rather than a programme. Regulation 8 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires employers to establish procedures for serious and imminent danger that enable people to stop work and go immediately to a place of safety if exposed to serious, imminent and unavoidable danger, and that — save in exceptional cases specified in the procedures — prevent them resuming work while serious and imminent danger remains. Regulation 14 requires employees to inform their employer, or an employee with specific responsibility for health and safety, of any work situation that a person with their training and instruction would reasonably consider represented a serious and immediate danger to health and safety. Section 7 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires employees to take reasonable care for themselves and others affected by their work. legislation.gov.uk: Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 8; legislation.gov.uk: Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 14; legislation.gov.uk: Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, section 7

The British reprisal protection sits in employment law. Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 protects a worker from detriment for leaving, or refusing to return while the danger persisted, in circumstances of danger they reasonably believed to be serious and imminent and could not reasonably have been expected to avert, or for taking appropriate steps to protect themselves or others in circumstances of danger they reasonably believed to be serious and imminent; the worker wording in subsection (1A) has applied since 31 May 2021. Section 100 treats dismissal of an employee on those grounds as unfair. Both turn on what the person reasonably believed rather than on whether the danger proved real. For the limb about taking steps to protect people there is an exception where the employer shows it was so negligent for the person to take those steps that a reasonable employer might have treated them as it did. That is why a stop that proved unnecessary still needs a record of what the stopper saw and why they acted. legislation.gov.uk: Employment Rights Act 1996, section 44; legislation.gov.uk: Employment Rights Act 1996, section 100

Across the EU, Article 8 of the Framework Directive requires employers to enable workers facing serious, imminent and unavoidable danger to stop work or leave for a place of safety, and to refrain from asking them to resume while serious and imminent danger remains save in exceptional cases duly substantiated; it also provides that workers who leave in that situation may not be placed at any disadvantage because of it. It applies through each member state's national law, and the wording of the British regulation 8 closely follows it. Under ILO Convention No. 155, a worker who removes themselves from a work situation they have reasonable justification to believe presents an imminent and serious danger to life or health is to be protected from undue consequences, in accordance with national conditions and practice, and the employer cannot require a return while that danger continues. The Convention binds only the states that have ratified it. EUR-Lex: Council Directive 89/391/EEC (the Framework Directive); ILO NORMLEX: Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (No. 155)

ISO 45001:2018 is a voluntary standard, not law. ISO's public preview shows its clause headings, including 5.4 Consultation and participation of workers and 7.3 Awareness, but the requirement text is sold rather than published free, and we have not read which clause carries any provision on workers removing themselves from danger — so we cite none. ISO's standard page also records the 2018 edition as due for revision, with ISO/DIS 45001 expected to replace it. Check any clause reference against the edition your certification body audits to. ISO: ISO 45001:2018 standard page and revision status; ISO Online Browsing Platform: ISO 45001:2018 public preview

What the legal thresholds mean for the record

Apart from the crane stop signal, which has no threshold at all, the role-based authorities, which are tied to a particular task, and the process safety shutdown conditions, which the employer defines, the legal thresholds above are high: imminent risk or danger offshore, imminent risk of death, serious physical harm or other serious hazard at Department of Energy workplaces, the potential for a catastrophic release under the EPA provision, a real danger of death or serious injury for the US right to refuse, and serious and imminent danger in Great Britain and the EU. A stop work programme may deliberately invite stops well below that, when something simply looks wrong — a design choice our programme guide covers. It has a consequence for the software. At the moment of the stop nobody knows which side of the legal line it falls on, so every stop needs the record that a stop above the line would need.

A stop above the line may later be looked at by a regulator reviewing a safety management programme, or in a dispute about whether someone suffered a detriment for leaving danger. A stop below it is what makes the programme believable to the people asked to use it. The record has to serve both without asking the person who stopped to classify their own stop.

What an auditable stop leaves on record

Why the restart is the step to test hardest

The stop is raised by one person at one moment. The restart is a decision made by someone else, often later and sometimes on another shift, and it is the point at which the pressure to get the job moving again falls on one person's judgement. The one record of an individual stop that section 250.1930 expressly requires in writing is the decision to resume, not the stop itself. British and EU law approach it from the other side: procedures must prevent resumption while serious and imminent danger remains. The Department of Energy construction requirements and the OSHA power line standard likewise tie resumption to protective measures being in place. Either way, the law's attention is on the restart as much as on the stop.

If stops are recorded on an incident or near-miss form, check what closes it. A record that closes when its corrective actions close does not answer the restart question; a stop-work record also has to close on a decision — a named person, a basis and a time — and the work should not be able to resume in the system, for example by reactivating a suspended permit, until that decision exists. Ask where the restart field is, who can complete it, and what prevents anyone else from completing it.

Our researched catalogue gives no help here. None of the profiles we hold documents a restart authorisation step for a stopped job. The nearest adjacent behaviour, suspending and reauthorising a permit, appears in several permit profiles mostly as something to demonstrate or verify rather than as a documented capability. Our permit-to-work guide sets out the documented scope of the permit products it compares, with their sources, and includes suspension in its demonstration.

The demonstration: stop a job, then try to restart it wrongly

Questions that separate candidates

Where stop work meets other systems

A stop usually interrupts something another system controls. For the permit a stop suspends, see permit-to-work software, and for the interfaces around it — isolation, concurrent work and handover — control of work. Offshore, the SWA statement must appear in every job safety analysis. An open stop is easily lost at shift handover.

A stop that reveals a hazard may also belong in near-miss reporting or incident management; decide in advance which record is the master and which is linked. A confidential route for raising reprisal is the same design problem as a whistleblowing channel. For the programme itself — policy wording, training and rollout — see the stop work authority programme guide.

Sources and evaluation limits

US offshore: eCFR: 30 CFR 250.1930, stop work authority (SWA); eCFR: 30 CFR 250.1931, ultimate work authority (UWA); eCFR: 30 CFR 250.1928, SEMS recordkeeping and documentation; Federal Register: revisions to SEMS, final rule, 78 FR 20423 (5 April 2013); eCFR: 30 CFR 285.810, safety management systems for renewable energy on the Outer Continental Shelf. US Department of Energy and EPA: eCFR: 10 CFR 851.20, DOE worker safety and health: management responsibilities and worker rights; eCFR: 10 CFR part 851, Appendix A, worker safety and health functional areas (construction safety); eCFR: 40 CFR 68.83, EPA Risk Management Program: employee participation (Program 3); eCFR: 40 CFR 68.10, EPA Risk Management Program: applicability and compliance dates; eCFR: 40 CFR 68.69, EPA Risk Management Program: operating procedures; Federal Register: EPA proposed rule, Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention, 91 FR 8970 (24 February 2026); Federal Register: EPA extension of comment period, 91 FR 16621 (2 April 2026). US OSHA: eCFR: 29 CFR 1977.12, exercise of rights afforded by the OSH Act; eCFR: 29 CFR 1977.5, persons protected by section 11(c); US OSHA: workers' right to refuse dangerous work; eCFR: 29 CFR 1926.1417, crane operation, including stop signals; eCFR: 29 CFR 1915.504, fire watches (shipyard employment); eCFR: 29 CFR 1926.1410, power line safety closer than the Table A zone; eCFR: 29 CFR 1910.120, hazardous waste operations and emergency response; eCFR: 29 CFR 1910.119, process safety management; US OSHA: PSM stakeholder meeting notice, 87 FR 53020 (30 August 2022). Great Britain: legislation.gov.uk: Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 8; legislation.gov.uk: Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 14; legislation.gov.uk: Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, section 7; legislation.gov.uk: Employment Rights Act 1996, section 44; legislation.gov.uk: Employment Rights Act 1996, section 100. EU and international: EUR-Lex: Council Directive 89/391/EEC (the Framework Directive); ILO NORMLEX: Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (No. 155). ISO: ISO: ISO 45001:2018 standard page and revision status; ISO Online Browsing Platform: ISO 45001:2018 public preview. Searches: eCFR phrase search for ‘stop work’; Federal Register, OSHA process safety proposed rules; Federal Register, EPA Risk Management Program documents. All checked or run on 22 September 2026; the eCFR text for titles 10, 29, 30 and 40 was current to 18 September 2026.

Nothing here is legal advice. Which provisions apply to you depends on where and what you operate, and is a determination for the people accountable for it. We have summarised the operative text rather than quoted it at length; read the provisions themselves before relying on them. The US federal rules listed are those we read and those an eCFR phrase search surfaced; it is not a complete survey, and rules worded differently may have been missed. Northern Ireland, US state plans and national law outside the US, Great Britain and the EU are not covered; other regimes, including Australia and Canada, may treat stopping work differently and have not been checked for this page.

No product was tested hands-on and none is ranked. We publish no figures on how often stops occur, how long they take to resolve or what they prevent, because we have not measured them and have not verified published figures worth repeating.