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Answer four questions and this page tells you which of the pre-cut gates apply to your job.
A RocketLevel field instrument for foremen, project managers, and whoever is holding the phone in the parking lot at 11 p.m. Two minutes to route, then read only your gates.
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Reviewed October 2026. OSHA, EPA and fire code rules change, and state plans and local codes vary. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with your state agency or a construction attorney before you rely on it.
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How to run this. Answer the four router questions from what you can see and what the facility manager can tell you in two minutes. The router names your gates by letter. Work those and skip the others. Every gate ends the same way: you clear it and the crew works, or you stop and call the party named in the stop rule. There is no partial credit on a gate, and there is no reading it after the cut.
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Make your own copy. Print this page or save it as a PDF. Fill the mobilization record at the bottom on the job. One copy per loss, kept in the file.
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The router
1. What kind of building is this?
- Hospital, clinic, surgery center, dialysis, imaging, long-term care, or a medical office suite with patients in it. → Gate E, plus whatever else the router gives you.
- Downtown core, shared party wall, no private lot, or your dumpster and trailer have to sit on public curb. → Gate F.
- Private lot, but the dumpster, the desiccant trailer, or truck staging would sit on a marked fire lane, in front of a hydrant, or across a fire-department connection. → Gate F, item 3 at minimum. A fire lane on private property is still the fire marshal's, and a suburban address does not make it yours.
- Anything else. → Neither.
2. What year did it go up? Ask the facility manager. If nobody on site knows, treat it as old.
- 1980 or earlier. → Gate B, both halves.
- After 1980. → Gate B, the lead half, plus the after-the-cut drill. What drops off at 1980 is OSHA's presumption at 1926.1101(b), not the asbestos. Asbestos was never banned outright in this country and it is still found in buildings that went up well after 1980. The Gate A inspection does not drop off either, and neither does the drill for what to do when suspect material comes down before anyone sampled. Read those two even on a 1994 building.
3. What is the water, what burned, and how long has it been sitting?
- Clean potable supply line, no contact with anything else, and found inside about 24 to 48 hours. → Skip Gate C.
- Sewage, standing floodwater, anything grossly contaminated, or water that came off a cooling tower, a chilled-water loop, a condenser line, a fire pump, or any treated building system. → Gate C.