Safety Scoring - EMR/TRIR & OSHA

When choosing a contractor to work with, our clients review a myriad of information - from proposal packages (thank you Admin/Marketing!) to pricing to safety information.

It's the last we'll be talking about here today. In today's blast, learn about the information that clients use to determine if we are a good fit for their safety program.

Why should I know this?

1. If you are a PM or other client-facing role, you may hear them ask about safety numbers. This info gives you a basis of what they are asking about, even though I (Anna) will be the one to give it to them.

2. As an ESOP, we are all affected by which jobs we receive as a company. Safety scores can help win or lose jobs, so it is important to know that every small injury has an effect on these scores, and serves as a reminder to work safely.

The Scores

TRIR - Total Recordable Incident Rate

The TRIR, “the OSHA Score” calculates how many incidents a company has in relation to the number of hours worked.

• This calculation does not take into consideration the severity or cost of an incident.

• The TRIR is based on the prior year and lower is better.

• Generally, clients are quite happy with scores at 1.0 or lower.

• They generally see a range of 3 years of scores, either by asking for the last 3 years of data, or a 3-year average.

The TRIR is calculated by:

(Total Number of Incidents x 200,000) divided by (total number of hours worked)

2025 saw 3 incidents and 596,000 hours worked.

Our TRIR for 2025 is 1.01.

Our 3-year average, including 2025 is 0.98.

EMR - Experience Modification Rating

The EMR is given directly to Isett by our insurance carrier and based on prior years.

This is calculated by taking the actual losses incurred by worker’s comp, compared to the expected losses for our industry rate & size (calculated by payroll).

• Simplified, if a 200-person Engineering Firm with a $1,000,000 payroll is expected to have $100,000 in claims per year, having exactly $100,000 in claims is a score of 1.0.

• The EMR does take severity into account (based on dollars spent and time lost).

• Lower is better. Clients are generally happy with 1.0 or below.

• The EMR runs on past years - our current score is WC claims from from 9/2021-9/2024.

Our EMR is 1.2.

We have a letter from our insurance company that explains our EMR being elevated from a small number of expensive incidents.

DART & LWD Rates - Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred

Lastly, clients will ask for our DART and LWD rates.

These are calculated the same way as the TRIR (the x200,000 divided by hours worked)

• DART - This uses the number of cases that included Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred in their duties.

• LWD - This uses the actual number of lost work days.

In 2025, 2 cases and had 2 lost workdays total. The rate for both of these is 0.67.

Clients like to see 0.5 or below.

OSHA Logs

Clients will also frequently request copies of our OSHA 300 logs.

These logs are filled out each year and have a list of each OSHA-recordable incident, when it occurred, a brief summary, and if the incident caused the associate to miss days of work or be restricted in their duties.

Note: The associate's names are redacted from client copies.

These logs are helpful to send to clients when requested, because they show the nature of our incidents are generally minor (i.e. tick bites).

So... the scores are... good or bad?

TL;DR: Our scores are slightly elevated (not good), but most clients are accepting of them. We are just above that 1.0 marker, but our OSHA logs and EMR letter help explain this to clients.

Come to our State of Safety Report Session on January 28th to learn more!