How Is TRIR Calculated? Get Your Rating Now With Our TRIR Calculator

One small number can have a huge impact on your construction or service business: your TRIR score.

General contractors, owners, insurance companies, and even your own workers look at it as a quick way to judge your safety performance. A low TRIR opens doors. A high TRIR raises questions.

In this guide, we’ll show you:

• What TRIR (Total Recordable Incident Rate) actually is

• How TRIR is calculated using the OSHA formula

• What counts as a recordable incident

• What a “good” TRIR looks like in high-risk industries

• How to track, improve, and use TRIR inside a modern safety program

And if you’d rather skip the math, you can plug your numbers into our free TRIR calculator anytime. Use our free TRIR Calculator here

 ⚠️ If you’re not sure what should be counted as an OSHA recordable injury or illness, don’t guess. 

Book a Free Safety Program Assessment with Safety Evolution and we’ll walk through your incidents, hours worked, and TRIR together, so you know your numbers are accurate and defensible.

What Is TRIR?

Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) is a safety metric used to compare your company’s safety performance over time and against others in your industry.

TRIR is based on:

• The number of OSHA recordable incidents in a period (usually 1 year), and

• The total hours worked by all employees and contractors in that same period

It answers a simple question:

“If we had 100 employees working full-time for a year, how many OSHA recordable incidents would we have?”

That’s why TRIR is so useful:

• It normalizes for company size

• It allows apples-to-apples comparisons between contractors

• It gives you a trend line year over year for your safety program

Internally, TRIR is a powerful benchmark. Externally, it’s often a gatekeeper for winning work.

What Counts as an OSHA Recordable Incident?

Before you calculate TRIR, you need to know what to count.

OSHA defines a recordable incident as a work-related injury or illness that results in one or more of the following (beyond first aid):

• Death

• Days away from work

• Restricted work or job transfer

• Medical treatment beyond first aid

• Loss of consciousness

• A significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or licensed health-care professional (even if it does not result in the above)

Minor first aid only (like simple bandages or ice packs) is not recordable.

Each country or state may have additional requirements, but if you’re using TRIR for OSHA or U.S.-based clients, you should follow OSHA’s definitions for recordables and how they’re logged on the OSHA 300 Log.

🔎 Tip: Get very clear on what your jurisdiction and OSHA define as first aid versus recordable. Overreporting makes your TRIR look worse than it is. Underreporting is a compliance and integrity problem. You want it accurate, not “optimized.”

Why Is Your Total Recordable Incident Rate So Important?

Your TRIR influences how others see your company:

• Owners and General Contractors

  • Many require a TRIR below a certain threshold just to prequalify or stay on the bid list.

  • High TRIR values can lead to extra scrutiny, safety plans, or outright disqualification.

• Regulators & Insurance Providers

  • A high TRIR can lead to more inspections and deeper questions about your safety program.

  • Insurers may factor TRIR into rates and eligibility.

• Workers & Potential Hires

  • TRIR is a rough indicator of how seriously you take safety.

  • A low, stable TRIR over time makes you more attractive to good workers.

Internally, your TRIR is a performance indicator:

• You can track it year-over-year as part of your safety objectives

• You can break it down by division, project, or region to see where things are working (or not)

• You can use it to support continuous improvement and executive-level reporting

It’s not the only number you should care about, but it’s a big one.

• How Is TRIR Calculated?

  Here’s the exact formula OSHA uses for TRIR:

  TRIR = (Number of OSHA recordable incidents × 200,000) ÷ Total hours worked

  Where:

  • Number of OSHA recordable incidents = total number of OSHA recordable injuries and illnesses for the period

  • 200,000 = the number of hours that 100 employees would work in a year (40 hours/week × 50 weeks × 100 workers)

  • Total hours worked = all hours worked by all employees and covered contractors (not including vacation, sick leave, or other non-worked hours)

  TRIR Calculation Example

  Let’s say over the last year you had:

  • 6 OSHA recordable incidents

  • 500,000 total hours worked (including field workers and eligible contractors)

  Your TRIR would be:

  TRIR = (6 × 200,000) ÷ 500,000
  TRIR = 1,200,000 ÷ 500,000
  TRIR = 2.4

  That’s your Total Recordable Incident Rate for that period.

  👉 Don’t want to do the math?
  Use our free online TRIR Calculator to plug in your incidents and total hours and get the number instantly.

What Is a “Good” TRIR?

In theory, a perfect TRIR is 0.0, no recordable incidents at all.

In reality, especially in high-risk industries like construction, oil & gas, and industrial services, you’ll rarely see long-term TRIR at zero.

As a rough guide (and this will vary by sector and region):

• 0.0 – 1.0: Excellent performance for most high-risk environments

• 1.0 – 3.0: Generally acceptable, but worth digging into trends and root causes

• Above 3.0: Often a sign that your safety program needs attention and that you may face questions from clients, insurers, and regulators

The key is not to obsess over one year’s number, it’s to look at trends:

• Is your TRIR dropping, stable, or climbing over the last 3–5 years?

• Are recordables concentrated in certain projects, tasks, or locations?

• Are you seeing the same types of injuries again and again?

TRIR becomes powerful when you connect it to how you manage safety, not just when you report it.

How to Use TRIR Inside Your Safety Program

TRIR on its own is just a result. The value comes when you tie it back to how you:

1. Capture incidents and near misses

2. Identify root causes and contributing factors

3. Assign and track corrective actions

4. Align training and field practices with the real risks

A modern safety program uses TRIR as one metric inside a bigger system that includes:

• Leading indicators (inspections, BBS observations, near misses, JSAs)

• Training completion and competency checks

• Corrective action closure rates

• Field-level engagement and safety culture

That’s where Safety Evolution comes in.

Make TRIR Part of a Digital Safety System

If you’re still:

• Tracking incidents in spreadsheets

• Storing hours worked in separate systems

• Manually calculating TRIR once a year for a client pre-qual form

…you’re working way harder than you need to and missing opportunities to improve faster.

With Safety Evolution’s safety management software, you can:

• Report incidents and near misses from the field (with photos and details)

• Log corrective actions and track whether they’re completed on time

• Schedule inspections, BBS observations, and competency reviews

• Integrate or import hours worked, then calculate TRIR and other metrics much more easily

This gives you a live picture of your safety performance, not just a number you scramble to calculate when a GC or auditor asks.

Free TRIR Calculator – Calculate Your Total Recordable Incident Rate

We built a simple, free TRIR calculator you can use anytime you need:

1. Count your OSHA recordable incidents for the period

2. Total your hours worked for employees and covered contractors (excluding vacation/leave)

3. Plug the numbers into the calculator

4. Get your TRIR, instantly

👉 Use the free OSHA TRIR Calculator here

You can use this:

• For pre-qualification forms

• For ISNetworld and other client systems

• For internal goals and reporting

Want Help Reducing Your TRIR (Not Just Reporting It)?

Calculating TRIR is the easy part.
Lowering it, sustainably and honestly, is the real challenge.

That’s where our combination of safety professionals, software, and training can help.

With Safety Evolution, you can:

• Work with safety professionals who help review your incidents, trends, and root causes

• Use our software to simplify reporting, inspections, and corrective actions

• Roll out training programs that are actually tied to the hazards driving your TRIR

If you’re tired of feeling like TRIR is just a number others judge you on and you’d like to actually control it, let’s talk. 👉 Book a free safety program assessment 

We'll:

• Review how you’re currently tracking incidents and TRIR

• Identify gaps in reporting, follow-up, and training

• Show you what a simple, digital safety system could look like for your company

From there, you can decide whether you want us to help you run the safety program, or simply take away a clearer plan.