Working on ice is unforgiving. When ice and cold water are part of your work environment, small errors in judgment, planning, or equipment use can turn a routine task into a life‑threatening emergency in seconds. This 3‑hour Working on Ice course is designed to give you a structured, practical framework for recognizing those risks, planning safe work, and understanding what must happen—before, during, and after an incident—to protect yourself and your co‑workers.

The course is organized into five connected modules that build from basic concepts to applied decision‑making:

Module 1 – The Safety Concept
This opening module establishes the overarching safety philosophy for working on or near ice. You will walk through core principles such as “no unnecessary exposure,” “no work without a plan,” and “everyone has stop‑work authority.” The focus is on understanding why ice work is fundamentally different from typical ground operations and how layered controls—engineering, administrative, and PPE—fit together to keep risk within acceptable limits.

Module 2 – Ice Considerations and Hazards to the Worker
Here you examine what makes ice strong, what makes it fail, and how environment, geography, and human activity combine to create hazards. You will consider ice types and conditions, loads and deflection, changing weather, currents, and site features such as inlets, outlets, and structures. The module connects these factors directly to worker risk: breakthrough, entrapment, falls, struck‑by hazards, and disorientation on large ice fields.

Module 3 – Cold Water and Human Physiology
This module explains what happens to the body when workers are exposed to cold air, cold surfaces, and cold water. You will learn about the stages of cold‑water immersion, cold shock, loss of muscle function, hypothermia, and afterdrop, as well as how clothing, workload, and medical history influence individual risk. The goal is to help you recognize early warning signs in yourself and others, and to understand why time is so critical once someone enters the water.

Module 4 – Pre‑Planning and Hazard Analysis
Before anyone steps onto ice, planning must happen. In this module you will learn how to gather site information, evaluate weather and ice data, identify access and egress routes, and apply formal hazard‑assessment tools to your work environment. You will practice identifying “no‑go” conditions, defining safe work zones, and deciding what additional controls or resources are required before work can proceed.

Module 5 – Preparing a Safe Work Plan
Building on the hazard analysis, this module walks through the development of a written Safe Work Plan specific to ice operations. You will learn how to define scope of work, staffing, load limits, routes, PPE requirements, monitoring procedures, and emergency triggers. Emphasis is placed on clear, practical documentation that can be communicated to the entire crew and used as a live reference throughout the job.

Module 6 – Rescue Philosophy and an Approach to Rescue
The final module addresses what happens when prevention is not enough. You will explore rescue versus recovery thinking, risk‑benefit decision‑making, and the concept of “self‑rescue, teammate rescue, then organized rescue.” The module outlines a stepwise approach to ice incidents: initial size‑up, establishing rescue priorities, selecting appropriate rescue options, and coordinating with specialized ice‑rescue teams or external agencies, all while staying within your organization’s policies and your own level of training.

By the end of this course, you will not be an ice‑rescue technician—but you will understand how ice behaves, how cold affects the human body, how to plan and document safe work, and how to support or initiate an effective response if something goes wrong.