Construction jobsite death rates have remained stagnant for a decade. Industry mantras have claimed the only acceptable number of injuries and deaths is zero, yet fatalities haven’t budged.

The industry’s fatal injury rate has plateaued at around 10 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers. To help move the needle, safety leaders have begun pursuing new methods to measure success in safety. They say established, existing metrics are flawed.

Levin reasoned that based on construction industry fatality data and Sundt’s work hours of exposure, the company could “expect” a fatality roughly every four years and 61 days. That was unacceptable.

Indeed, a 2020 study by the Construction Safety Research Alliance using 17 years of data and 3.2 trillion worker hours discredited the measurement, as it found no discernible association between total recordable injury rates and fatalities. (TRIR)

TRIR is the rate at which a company experiences an OSHA-recordable incident, per 200,000 worker-hours. A recordable incident is a work-related injury that involves loss of consciousness or one that requires medical treatment beyond first aid, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to other work.

Experts say the flaw with TRIR is in its name: It solely captures recordable events, not the severity of the injury and not near misses.

“A one-stitch cut, a broken leg and a fatality all count the same,” Levin said.

For example, industry leaders have largely gotten away from championing a certain threshold of days without injury.

“When you celebrate such milestones you’re not celebrating a hazard-free workplace, you’re celebrating a recordable injury-free workplace,” said Chris Trahan Cain,

Everyday things such as worker fatigue, stress, lack of equipment or falling behind schedule can increase the likelihood of a serious injury, according to ACIG.