PSDA Safety Inspector Exam study plan

Draft a one-page map of the diving safety program's written elements (policy, manual, roles, review cycle) and mark which elements your own workplace or a sample program is missing

List each regulatory and consensus-standard reference in the program manual and classify it as regulation, consensus standard, or internal policy

Explain in writing how a documented duty of care differs from a regulatory minimum, using three concrete diving scenarios

Build a 40-question self-quiz on program administration and legal duties, then score it and log every missed concept

Trace one complete document-control cycle (draft, approve, distribute, revise, archive) for a diving safety manual and identify where version drift typically occurs

Compare record-retention expectations for training, equipment, and incident records and note where they diverge

Write a short legal-duties briefing that names the parties owed a duty (divers, tenders, supervisors, clients, regulators) and the standard applied to each

Rewrite three vague manual statements into auditable, verifiable requirements

Produce a risk assessment for a planned dive using a likelihood-by-severity matrix, with at least eight hazards and a named control for each

Sequence a dive operation from briefing to closeout and assign each step to a role in the chain of command

Draft a dive plan for a moderate-complexity operation covering objectives, depth, gas, communications, and abort criteria

Define three hold points where the supervisor must give explicit go-ahead before work continues

Run a tabletop exercise of a dive plan change (weather, depth, or task change) and document how the plan and risk assessment are re-approved

Write a chain-of-command chart with authority and stop-work responsibility defined for each role

List the briefing content a supervisor must cover and convert it into a sign-off checklist

Self-test on dive planning and team organization, then re-teach the two weakest areas in writing

Build a personnel qualification matrix mapping each role to required training, certification, and currency, with expiry tracking

Design a training-record file structure that proves qualification on any given date

Create an equipment register with inspection intervals, acceptance criteria, and responsible person for each item class

Write five equipment inspection entries that would survive an audit, including defect disposition and return-to-service sign-off

Trace the full lifecycle record chain for one piece of diving equipment from receipt to retirement

Explain compressor maintenance and filter-change records and how they link to air-quality test results

Write an air-quality sampling schedule that states frequency, sampling points, test parameters, and record retention

Identify three failure modes in a gas supply system and the record evidence that would reveal each one early

Draft an emergency action plan section covering activation, roles, communications, evacuation, and medical referral, with a call tree

Write an incident report from a constructed scenario that separates facts, timeline, and findings

Design an audit checklist of at least 25 items drawn from the domains already studied, each with an evidence source

Plan an incident investigation sequence that preserves evidence and avoids blame-first conclusions

Run a mock audit against your own checklist and record findings with severity and corrective action

Write a root-cause analysis for a constructed incident using a causal tree or five-why chain

Complete a full-length timed practice exam across all nine domains and score each domain separately

Build a final one-page recall sheet for the three weakest domains and schedule two review passes