Standardizing SIF Tracking in Construction

Since OSHA developed the definition of a recordable incident in 1979, it’s become one of the most tracked and well-understood benchmarks among safety professionals. The related metric, Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), is one of the most used metrics for tracking and comparing safety performance across different projects and companies. 

Increasingly, however, sophisticated safety professionals believe that TRIR may not be the only or best metric for assessing the safety of projects and job sites. Metrics like Serious Injury or Fatality Exposure or Potentials (SIF-P) provide an opportunity to consider more than just the rare incidents that meet the recordable definition. They instead look at the observed behaviors that provide insights and warnings into the actual exposures that could turn into future recordable incidents.

To make meaningful progress on safety outcomes, we need the industry and our regulators to help define and standardize SIF-P, ensuring we can understand and trust the metric as much as we do with TRIR.

The Trusted Benchmark: TRIR

TRIR has become a staple in safety measurement because it provides a consistent and widely accepted method for tracking safety performance. This metric calculates the number of recordable incidents per 100 full-time workers annually, allowing companies to gauge their safety performance against industry averages. The standardized nature of TRIR facilitates industry-wide benchmarking and comparability, making it readily accessible and leading to its use as a key indicator of a company’s historical safety performance.

The Limitations of Relying on TRIR

Solely using recordable incidents to evaluate contractor risk only considers incidents that have already occurred, regardless of severity. This approach can exaggerate the significance of minor incidents while overlooking more serious near misses, hazards, and exposures that may have resulted in a Severe Injury or Fatality (SIF). An overreliance on TRIR can lead to a skewed perception of safety performance, as companies with lower TRIRs may still be at significant risk of severe accidents. The comfort of using a standardized metric like TRIR can mask the value of tracking a broader, potentially more severe set of incidents and exposures that do not meet the recordable incident definition, but can still expose potential risks. 

Imagine a scenario where a crane lifting a heavy load experiences a mechanical failure, causing the load to swing uncontrollably. Although no one is injured and no property damage occurs, the incident qualifies as a SIF-P due to the risk of catastrophic injury or death had the load struck workers or equipment. Even though it does not meet the criteria for a recordable incident, it highlights a significant safety risk that requires immediate attention and mitigation.

Now, consider a scenario where a worker accidentally cuts their hand on a sharp tool or piece of metal, requiring a few stitches. While the injury is minor and poses little risk to the worker’s overall health and safety, it qualifies as a recordable incident because it requires medical treatment beyond first aid. Despite the low risk, the incident would be investigated to understand how it occurred and to implement measures to prevent similar minor injuries.

The Case for SIF-P

Too much energy and focus on recordable incidents can take valuable attention away from exposures that don’t meet the definition of a recordable incident, but expose much more serious risks. 

SIF tracking enables safety professionals to focus on incidents and exposures with the most severe potential consequences, providing a better opportunity to understand potential hazards and the contributing factors that could lead to SIFs. Companies can implement more effective and targeted risk mitigation measures by identifying and learning from these high-risk situations.

For example, imagine that a safety manager observes an ironworker using a shock-absorbing lanyard without the proper fall clearance below. The safety manager stops the worker and provides them with a self-retracting lifeline (SRL), but the investigation goes no further because no incident occurred. 

The next day, another ironworker from the same company makes the same mistake and suffers a serious injury. If the initial observation had been treated as a SIF-P exposure and investigated with the same diligence as a recordable incident, the root cause that led to the workers using a shock-absorbing lanyard despite not having the proper fall clearance below could have been identified and rectified before an injury occurred.

Shifting our focus from just tracking recordable incidents to including SIF-P exposures can enable companies to increase visibility into the most significant risks, identify trends, and prevent incidents before they occur. Many companies are beginning to recognize the value of this approach. Some have adopted terms like “Stuff That Kills You” (STKY) to highlight critical safety risks. This shift in focus reflects a broader industry trend toward prioritizing, identifying, and mitigating severe risks over merely tracking the frequency of all incidents.

A Need for Standardization

Adopting new metrics like SIF-P will only happen if the data is collected and benchmarked in a standardized way. Highwire is at the forefront of the movement toward tracking and understanding SIFs and SIF-Ps. We believe this approach will prevent more fatalities and serious injuries, ultimately creating safer construction sites and facilities.

The construction industry’s reliance on TRIR has provided a foundation for safety benchmarking, but its limitations highlight the need for a more comprehensive approach. Tracking SIF-P offers a clearer understanding of severe risks and helps identify the sources of serious incidents. Standardizing the benchmarking of SIF tracking will empower the industry to collect better data, gain insights, and collaborate more effectively, leading to safer construction sites.