DART rate, and why clients ask for it next to TRIR

The practical answer

DART — Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred — narrows the recordable count to incidents that actually cost someone working time. It exists because TRIR treats a stitched finger and a broken back identically, and clients wanted a severity signal without reading every log line.

The formula

DART = (incidents involving days away, restricted work or job transfer × 200,000) ÷ hours worked.

Identical denominator to TRIR, identical 200,000 constant. Only the numerator changes, so DART can never exceed TRIR. If someone reports a DART above their TRIR, one of the two is wrong.

What counts

An incident enters the DART numerator if it produced any of the following, regardless of how many:

• One or more days away from work beyond the day of injury.
• Restricted duty — the worker returned but could not perform their routine job functions.
• Transfer to a different job because of the injury.

Reading the two together

The ratio is the informative part. A contractor with TRIR 4.0 and DART 3.6 is having serious incidents. A contractor with TRIR 4.0 and DART 0.9 is having many minor ones — a different problem with a different fix, and a much easier conversation with a client.

This is also where light-duty programs show up in the data. A contractor who brings injured workers back on restricted duty records DART cases they might otherwise have recorded as days away; the count moves between categories rather than disappearing.

A worked example

A 60-person concrete contractor works 118,000 hours and records 5 recordables. Two involved days away, one required three weeks of restricted duty, and two were treated and the worker returned to full duty the same shift.

TRIR = (5 × 200,000) ÷ 118,000 = 8.47. DART counts only the three qualifying cases: (3 × 200,000) ÷ 118,000 = 5.08.

The gap between 8.47 and 5.08 is the informative part. Roughly 60% of this contractor's recordables cost working time — a severity profile a client will ask about, and one worth getting ahead of with the corrective actions already taken.

Where it gets misreported

The most common error is counting days rather than incidents. DART counts the number of qualifying incidents, not the total days lost across them — one injury causing forty days away is one case, not forty. Contractors who invert this produce alarming rates and then spend a season explaining them.

The second is forgetting that the day of injury itself does not count toward days away.

Why clients weight it more than TRIR

TRIR is easier to move without changing anything real. Aggressive first-aid classification, careful denominator construction, and a mild year can all pull it down. DART is harder to massage, because days away and restricted duty leave a trail in payroll, in the claim file, and in the 300A columns.

That is why experienced prequalification reviewers read DART first and TRIR second, and why a contractor presenting an excellent TRIR alongside a DART close to it usually gets more questions, not fewer.

Getting it from the 300A reliably

Both DART components come straight off the OSHA 300A summary, which is precisely why the 300A is requested in nearly every prequalification packet. When you are collecting packets rather than submitting them, computing DART from the uploaded summary — instead of accepting a typed figure — is the difference between a verified number and a claimed one.