OSHA Safety Metrics Explained: TRIR, DART, and EMR

Why these numbers decide who bids

On most commercial and industrial work, you cannot get on the bid list without passing a safety prequalification, and three metrics dominate that screen: TRIR, DART, and EMR. General contractors use them to filter subcontractors, owners use them to filter GCs, and insurers use EMR to price your workers' compensation premium.

They are not just paperwork. A high TRIR or an EMR above 1.0 can disqualify you outright on jobs that set a hard ceiling, and a clean record can be the difference on an otherwise even bid. Understanding how they are calculated is the first step to managing them.

TRIR: your total recordable incident rate

TRIR measures how many OSHA-recordable injuries and illnesses you had per 100 full-time workers over a year. The formula is:

TRIR = (number of recordable cases x 200,000) / total hours worked

The 200,000 is the number of hours 100 employees work in a year (100 workers x 40 hours x 50 weeks). It normalizes companies of different sizes so a large and a small contractor can be compared on the same scale.

Worked example: a company records 3 recordable cases and its crews worked 250,000 hours during the year. TRIR = (3 x 200,000) / 250,000 = 600,000 / 250,000 = 2.4. That means 2.4 recordable cases per 100 full-time workers for the year.

DART: the more serious cases

DART stands for Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred. It uses the same formula and the same 200,000-hour base as TRIR, but it counts only the more serious recordable cases — those that resulted in days away from work, restricted duty, or a job transfer. Minor recordables that did not cost time or restrict the worker are excluded.

DART = (number of DART cases x 200,000) / total hours worked

Worked example: using the same 250,000 hours, suppose 2 of those 3 recordable cases involved days away or restricted duty. DART = (2 x 200,000) / 250,000 = 400,000 / 250,000 = 1.6. DART is always less than or equal to TRIR, because every DART case is also a recordable case. The gap between the two tells you how severe your incidents are, not just how frequent.

What counts as recordable

Both rates depend on counting recordables correctly, and that trips a lot of companies up. Under OSHA's recordkeeping rules, a work-related injury or illness is generally recordable if it results in any of the following beyond ordinary first aid:

• •Death.
• •Days away from work.
• •Restricted work or transfer to another job.
• •Medical treatment beyond first aid (first aid itself does not make a case recordable).
• •Loss of consciousness.
• •A significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health care professional.

EMR: how insurers price your safety record

EMR — the experience modification rate — is different in kind from TRIR and DART. You do not calculate it from your own log; your insurer (through the rating bureau) sets it by comparing your workers' compensation claims history to what is expected for companies of your type and size. It then becomes a multiplier on your premium.

The benchmark is 1.0, which represents the industry average. An EMR of 1.0 means your claims experience is about what is expected, so you pay the standard premium. Below 1.0 means a better-than-average record and a discount; above 1.0 means worse-than-average experience and a surcharge. An EMR of 0.85 means you pay 85 percent of the baseline; an EMR of 1.20 means you pay 120 percent. The same job costs you more in insurance than a competitor with a lower mod.

That is why EMR shows up on bid forms. Many owners and GCs set a maximum EMR — commonly at or near 1.0 — to qualify, so a high mod is both a direct cost and a barrier to entry. EMR is built from several years of history, which means it is slow to move: a bad year follows you, and a clean record takes time to pay off. Tracking recordables, hours, and rates as you go — Field PM's safety module keeps the OSHA log and computes TRIR and DART straight from your incident records and hours worked — is how you keep these numbers from surprising you at prequalification time.