General Examination Information:
- An applicant for certification is required to meet the academic and/or experience qualifications outlined in the WSO Professional Certification Program, the WSO Hazardous Materials Certification Program, the WSO Instructor Certification Program, and the WSO Governmental Certification Program.
- Each applicant is evaluated by the WSO Certification Board to ensure these requirements have been met.
- Approval by the Board is necessary before the applicant is permitted to undertake the written examination.
Examination Format:
- Every applicant will be asked the essay question, “What have you accomplished in the past twelve months which you consider an important contribution to safety disciplines or your professional expertise?” This is to be answered in no more than one hundred words.
- After completing the essay questions, the applicant is allowed three hours to complete approximately 250 multiple-choice and true/false questions designed to measure the broad spectrum of knowledge fundamental to a practicing safety professional.
- The questions in the WSO-CSS examination are divided into two parts. The first 150 questions measure the applicant’s general safety knowledge. The second 100 questions test his/her expertise in the designated area of specialization.
- Examinations for WSO Hazardous Materials certifications contain some fill-in-the-blank questions.
Examination Monitors:
- WSO certification exams must be proctored, whether taken online or written. Where available and/or practical, the exam must be taken at a Sylvan Learning Center.
- Sylvan Learning Center has partnered with WSO to make this service available to the applicant at an hourly rate (payable directly to Sylvan Learning Center at the time of the exam; fees vary by location). Syl-van Learning Center has over 800 centers worldwide. To find a location near you, search the Sylvan Learning Center website:www.sylvanlearning.com/locations.
- For applicants who do not have a Sylvan Learning Center in close proximity, arrangements must be made with a local college/university, institution, library, employer, or other acceptable monitoring facility or WSO National office for India. In this case, arrangement must be made for supervision of the exam by an acceptable monitor (local librarian, personnel manager, college professor, etc.). The applicant is responsible for payment of any monitoring fee designated by the monitoring facility.
Testing Procedure:
- The WSO Certification Director will notify the applicant of approval to sit for a WSO Certification exam.
- This notification will contain a hyperlink and password for the exam, as well as an identification verification form to be printed and submitted to the monitoring facility at the time of examination.
- The applicant’s identification must be verified by the acceptable designee of the monitoring facility before the exam is administered.
- At the end of the three-hour examination period, the monitor will email the verification form and a signed statement that the applicant was under his/her supervision during the entire examina-tion period.
- For applicants requesting a written exam, the exam will be mailed directly to the monitor.
- At the end of the three-hour ex-amination period, the monitor will place the essay and examination answer sheets in the provided envelope and return them to the WSO Certification Director with a signed statement that the applicant was under his/her supervision during the entire ex-amination period.
Examination Passing Rate:
A passing score of 75% Must be achieved.