What TRIR is, and what it actually tells a client

The practical answer

TRIR — Total Recordable Incident Rate — is the number most prequalification decisions turn on. It expresses how many OSHA-recordable injuries a company had per 100 full-time workers per year, which makes a 12-person shop and a 900-person contractor comparable on one axis.

It is also routinely misunderstood in both directions: contractors treat it as a safety grade, and clients treat it as a pass/fail gate. It is neither.

The formula

TRIR = (number of recordable incidents × 200,000) ÷ total hours worked.

The 200,000 is not arbitrary: it is 100 employees × 40 hours × 50 weeks, the standard full-time-equivalent year. Dividing by your actual hours and multiplying by that constant normalizes everyone to the same denominator.

So a contractor with 3 recordables across 450,000 hours has a TRIR of (3 × 200,000) ÷ 450,000 = 1.33. The same 3 incidents across 150,000 hours gives 4.00 — three times worse, on identical incident counts. Hours worked is the variable people forget to check.

What counts as recordable

This is where most errors enter, and they run in both directions — over-reporting inflates your rate, under-reporting is a recordkeeping violation. An injury is generally recordable when it involves any of:

• Death.
• Days away from work.
• Restricted work or transfer to another job.
• Medical treatment beyond first aid — the first-aid list in the OSHA regulation is specific and narrower than most people assume.
• Loss of consciousness.
• A significant injury or illness diagnosed by a licensed healthcare professional.

What a client reads into it

Hiring clients benchmark TRIR against the industry average for your NAICS code, not against zero. A rate below the average for your trade reads as normal-to-good; well above it prompts questions about your program rather than an automatic rejection.

There is no universal pass mark. Each client sets its own threshold, which is why the same contractor can clear one client's bar and fail another's in the same week. Ask the specific client what they require before spending money chasing a number nobody asked for.

Its real limitation

TRIR is a lagging indicator built on small numbers. For a small contractor, a single recordable can swing the rate by more than a full point, which makes year-over-year comparison noisy and makes a one-year snapshot close to meaningless. That is why most clients ask for three years.

It also says nothing about severity — a stitched finger and a life-altering injury are one recordable each. DART exists partly to correct for that, which is why the two are almost always requested together.

Where it comes from in practice

Your recordable count comes off the OSHA 300 log and is summarized annually on the 300A. Hours worked come from payroll. Both feed the prequalification packet alongside the EMR letter from your carrier — and if you are collecting those packets from subcontractors rather than submitting them, computing the rate from the 300A yourself is more reliable than trusting the number a vendor typed into a form.