Are You Tracking These Construction Safety Metrics?

Construction industry safety standards can seem overwhelming. Maintaining compliance and worker safety while keeping an eye on productivity is no small task, and safety managers can use all the help they can get. Want to know how your program is doing? Make sure you’re tracking these construction safety metrics.

Experience Modification Rate

Experience Modification Rate (EMR) is a measure of the number of claims against your organization. It measures the cost of past injuries and also gauges the cost of future chances of risk.

It’s an important safety metric but also has a significant, direct effect on the bottom line. That’s because EMR is used by insurance companies to set premium rates on your workers’ compensation policy. When your employees are making more claims because of more injuries and illnesses, it costs the insurance company. That cost, of course, is passed on to your organization.

Reportable Incidents

Reportable incidents are important first and foremost because you care about the safety of your workers. In the construction industry, reportable incidents may be more likely to cause fatalities rather than just injury and illness. According to OSHA, Construction's "Fatal Four" were responsible for 60.6% of construction worker deaths in 2014.

• Falls - 359 out of 899 total deaths in construction (39.9%)
• Electrocutions - 74 (8.2%)
• Struck by Object - 73 (8.1%)
• Caught-in/compressed by equipment or objects - 39 (4.3%)

These numbers indicate the importance of implementing a construction safety plan to reduce—and eliminate—incidents. Safety incident management software can also help your construction business gain insight into workplace incidents and ensure corrective actions are in place to avoid recurrence.

Injury and Illness Rates

The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps detailed data on injury and illness rates for organizations operating in the states. Your organization’s numbers are also reported to shareholders and serve as an important metric for performance as well as an indicator of a company’s future viability.

Agency Inspection Outcome

Inspection management is an important feature of your safety program because this metric serves as a key measure of your standing with OSHA. Knowing what inspectors are looking for, preparing for inspections and even the psychology of the inspection routine are important areas of focus for all construction safety managers.

A good safety software platform can help improve your agency inspection outcome as well as the other metrics mentioned here in this post. Make sure your organization is up-to-date, compliant and safe by ensuring your software is able to track the overall performance of your construction safety program.

To learn more about how you can effectively manage your EHS program, visit Building Materials & Construction EHS Software.