CHECKOUT OUR NEW OSHA TRIR & DART VIDEO.
Back by popular demand, our OSHA Power Brief that discusses and explains TRIR and DART:
The Skinny: In this edition of our OSHA Power Brief series, we’ll define and discuss two critical safety performance metrics:
• TRIR: Total Recordable Incident Rate
• DART: Days Away from work, days of Restricted work activity, and/or days of jobs Transfer
Why is it important to understand these key safety metrics?
• The primarily value of TRIR and DART is to evaluate and quantify a company’s safety performance.
• Companies who meet OSHA’s record keeping requirements must calculate, report and post these values on an annual basis on their OSHA 300 & 300A Logs and report per OSHA’s electronic reporting requirements implemented several years ago.
• High (ie: poor) TRIR and DART scores can trigger targeted OSHA inspections, which are typically “comprehensive” in nature meaning that they’ll scrutinize virtually all components of companies health and safety programs. This includes written programs, employee training, record keeping requirements, and documentation of routine inspections to identify and correct health and safety hazards. For companies that aren’t prepared, this can lead to significant fines and penalties that can add up to $tens or even $hundreds of thousands of dollars. It happens every single day to US companies. To learn more about how to manage OSHA compliance, click here.
- Companies (i.e. clients) often scrutinize the safety performance of vendors to help determine who they want to do business with. High scores can often result in lost business, while low scores can result in gained and/or increased business.
- These metrics can sometimes impact the cost of insurance premiums.
- Fair or not, a quick glance at a company’s TRIR and DART scores tell much, either good or bad, about a company and it’s culture.
Obviously, these two key safety performance metrics are vital and must be managed, tracked and reported in order to ensure a safe work place, reduce regulatory risk, meet customer scrutiny, and control the cost of insurance premiums.
Want to learn more? Read on…
The Details:
Before getting into the details surrounding TRIR and DART, it’s important to understand what a Recordable Incident is:
• Definition of a “Recordable” Incident: All work related deaths and illnesses, and those work-related injuries which result in: death, loss of consciousness, restriction of work or motion, transfer to another job, or require medical treatment beyond first aid.
As you might have guessed, Recordable Incidents/Cases are the basis for calculating TRIR and DART.
How are TRIR and DART Calculated and what is their additional relevance?
TRIR:
– Calculation Formula: Total Number of Recordable Cases x 200,000/divided by total hours worked by all employees during the year covered.
Relevance:
• Allows you (as well as your customers and OSHA) to compare your injury rates to other company’s injury rates that are in businesses similar to yours.
• Companies and Customers often request and scrutinize this vital Safety Performance Indicator during the evaluation process in order to determine which contractors they want to work with!
• IMPORTANT NOTE: OSHA’s 200,000 standard annual hours benchmark unfairly penalizes smaller companies with few employees and much smaller total annual work hours. In other words, even 1 or 2 recordable injuries incurred by a smaller contractor will greatly inflate the TRIR score. Unfortunately OSHA and customers don’t normally take this into account when evaluating their contractors (and when OSHA scrutinizes safety performance records), which is another reason why it is VITAL that companies work hard to reduce injuries and illness in the workplace.
DART:
Cases which involve Days Away from work, days of Restricted work activity, and/or days of job Transfer.
– Calculation Formula: Number of CASES with days away from work or job transfer or restrictions (cases on 300 log with either column H or I checked) multiplied by 200,000/divided by total hours worked by all employees during the year covered. How did OSHA come up with 200,000 as the benchmark standard for these formulas? It’s the equivalent of 100 employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, and provides the standard base for incident rates.
Relevance:
• Allows you (as well as your customers and OSHA) to compare your injury rates to other company’s injury rates that are in businesses similar to yours.
• Companies and Customers often request and scrutinize this vital Safety Performance Indicator during the evaluation process in order to determine which contractors they want to work with!
SEE UPDATED, IMPORTANT AND RELEVANT INFORMATION BELOW (POSTED 11/21/2019)
Since this blog post was originally published several years ago, we wanted to update it with important information.
First of all, all above information is still relevant and accurate, however tracking and managing your TRIR and DART metrics has become even more important due to OSHA’s revised electronic reporting requirements.
OSHA has instituted new electronic OSHA 300 log submission requirements (See More Details Here) for certain high hazard industries including manufacturing, construction, medical care and industrial services. This new reporting requirement poses significant implications for companies, especially if their TRIR and DART scores are high. High scores could trigger OSHA inspections and enforcement actions, and now data could be viewed by your local community including potential employees, competitors and even your customers. High injury rates reflect poorly on a company’s reputation and could result in recruiting problems, lost business and more. This heightened visibility makes managing your injury and illness rates to prevent negative repercussions.
Editors Note: This post was originally published several years ago and has now been updated to reflect new relevant information.
HIGH DART SCORES, TYPICALLY >7, CAN TRIGGER A COMPREHENSIVE OSHA ENFORCEMENT INSPECTIONS THAT OFTEN RESULT IN FINES THAT ADD UP TO $10s OR $100s OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS! TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, THESE COMPREHENSIVE INSPECTIONS CAN BE VERY TIME CONSUMING AND DISRUPTIVE FOR YOUR BUSINESS.
WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MANAGING YOUR TRIR AND DART SCORES & HOW TO MANAGE OSHA COMPLIANCE?
CALL 512-457-0374 OR CLICK BELOW
