OSHA incident rate calculator

If a general contractor or a prequal portal has asked for your TRIR, and you are staring at the letters wondering what it even means, this video is for you. In a few minutes you will know exactly what TRIR is, the one simple formula to calculate it, how it is different from DART, and, the question everyone actually asks, what counts as a good number. It is easier than it looks.

First, what TRIR actually is. It stands for Total Recordable Incident Rate, and it is a measure of how many OSHA-recordable injuries and illnesses your company had, normalized so you can compare a five-person shop to a five-hundred-person company fairly. The whole point of normalizing is that raw injury counts are meaningless without context: ten injuries at a huge company might be excellent, and two at a tiny one might be terrible. TRIR is read as the number of recordable cases per one hundred full-time workers per year. And it matters because general contractors and prequalification portals like ISNetworld use it to score you before they let you on site.

Here is the formula, and it is the same formula for every OSHA rate. TRIR equals your number of recordable cases, times two hundred thousand, divided by the total hours worked by all employees. That is it. The two hundred thousand is not a random number: it is one hundred full-time workers times two thousand hours in a work year, which is why the final rate reads as cases per one hundred workers. You pull both numbers straight from your OSHA three hundred A summary: the recordable case count, and the total hours worked. Multiply, divide, and you have your TRIR.

Let's run a quick one so it is concrete. Say your company had three recordable cases last year, and your crews worked a total of two hundred fifty thousand hours. You take three, times two hundred thousand, which is six hundred thousand. Then you divide that by two hundred fifty thousand total hours. That gives you a TRIR of two point four. So this company had the equivalent of two point four recordable cases per one hundred workers. That single number is what a prequal reviewer compares against everyone else bidding the same work.

You will also get asked for your DART rate, so let me clear that up, because it uses the exact same formula. The only thing that changes is which cases you count. TRIR counts every OSHA-recordable case. DART is the more serious subset: only cases that involved days away from work, restricted duty, or a job transfer. And there is a third one, LTIFR, the lost-time injury frequency rate, which counts only cases with days away from work. Here is the useful read on it: a company with a high TRIR but a low DART is having a lot of minor recordables, whereas a high DART means the injuries that are happening are serious. Reviewers look at both together.

Now the question everyone actually wants answered: what is a good TRIR? The honest answer is that lower is always better, but good is relative. There is no single magic number that is good across every industry, because a rate that is excellent in a high-hazard trade like roofing could be mediocre in a low-hazard one. The right way to judge your number is to compare it against the average for your specific industry, not against all industries lumped together. And practically, many general contractors want to see you at or below the benchmark for your trade before they will hire you. So the goal is not zero on a chart, it is beating your industry's average and trending down year over year.

It is worth being clear about why this number carries so much weight. On a prequal portal, your TRIR and DART are often a gate: if they are above the threshold your hiring client set, you can get flagged or filtered out before a human ever reads your safety programs. So a bad rate can quietly cost you the bid. The thing is, your incident rate is a lagging indicator, it reflects what already happened. The leading fix, the thing that actually brings the number down over time, is a real, followed safety program: the training, the procedures, and the controls that prevent the next recordable. That is what turns a bad rate into a good one.

So here are the two things you need. First, this free calculator on TailgateDocs: you punch in the numbers from your three hundred A, and it gives you your TRIR, your DART, and your LTIFR instantly, and shows you exactly how each one was computed, so you never have to do the math by hand. That is free. Second, the actual fix for a high rate, the written safety program that both drives the number down over time and satisfies the prequal reviewer looking at it, is one hundred and forty nine dollars. Calculate where you stand, then put the program in place that improves it. Both links are in the description and the pinned comment.

Quick recap. TRIR is your recordable cases times two hundred thousand, divided by total hours worked, and it reads as cases per one hundred workers per year. DART uses the same formula but counts only the serious cases with days away, restriction, or transfer. There is no universal good number, so compare against your own industry and aim to beat that average and trend downward. And remember the rate is a lagging indicator, the real lever is a safety program that prevents the next injury. Calculate yours free at tailgatedocs dot com slash tools. See you in the next one.