What this is
What is a contractor safety statistics review?
What is a contractor safety statistics review?
A contractor safety statistics review examines a contractor's injury rates, enforcement history and insurance claims over recent years to decide whether their safety performance is acceptable. It compares rates against hours worked, an industry benchmark, and their own trend, rather than judging a single figure alone.
How is it different from a safety program review?
This review is quantitative: what happened, expressed as rates and counts. A safety program review is qualitative: whether the contractor's written system and its implementation are adequate. A contractor can have clean numbers and a weak system, or the reverse, and the two are kept separate so neither hides the other.
Why does trend matter more than the latest figure?
A single year's rate can be shaped by one bad incident or a change in workforce size, and neither tells you what to expect next. A three-year trend shows whether performance is genuinely improving, holding steady, or deteriorating, the question a renewal decision depends on.
Scope
When is a contractor safety statistics review required?
This review is one step in a contractor management programme, and it only covers the numbers. Using it to judge the contractor's written safety system, or to decide whether they should be engaged at all, pushes those decisions onto the wrong record.
Use this template when
- A contractor is being prequalified and their historical injury and enforcement record needs checking
- The annual review interval for an already-approved contractor has been reached
- A trigger event, a serious incident, a regulatory notice, a sharp change in rate, calls for an out-of-cycle look
- A renewal decision needs a documented basis in the contractor's actual performance
- A linked record needs this one to exist: links vendor
Do not use it for
- Contractor Safety Program Review, which reviews whether the contractor's written safety system and its documentation are adequate, not their injury numbers
- Contractor Prequalification Questionnaire, which collects the contractor's safety, insurance, training and performance information before they are approved at all
- Contractor Risk Classification, which classifies the contractor by the inherent risk of the work rather than by their track record
- Insurance Adequacy Review, which checks coverage limits and terms, not claims history or injury trend
- Anything outside KnowContractor, which belongs in the workspace that owns that process
Compliance mapping
Which ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4 requirements does this satisfy?
ISO 45001 requires the coordination and evaluation of contractors as part of procurement, but it does not prescribe a rate calculation or a pass threshold. The defensibility of this review rests on whether the numbers were checked against a denominator and a trend, not on the score alone.
| Clause | Requirement | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Contractor OH&S performance considered as a criterion in selection, and coordinated as part of the OH&S management system | Header |
| OSHA 29 CFR 1904.7 | Recordable and lost-time incident rate calculation against hours worked, the basis for any incidence rate comparison | Injury statistics |
| ISO 45001 cl.9.1.1 | Monitoring and measurement of OH&S performance, including trend over time rather than a single measurement | Injury statistics |
| ISO 45001 cl.10.2 | Investigation of incidents and near misses, with corrective actions tracked to closure rather than left open | Leading indicators |
| OSHA 29 CFR 1903 | Inspections, citations and proposed penalties, the record a regulatory enforcement history check should reconcile against | Enforcement and claims |
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.1 | General procurement criteria applied to external providers, including prior performance on other sites | Enforcement and claims |
| ISO 45001 cl.9.3 | Management review inputs on the status of external providers, feeding forward into classification and approval decisions | Assessment |
What it does not cover
- Contractor Safety Program Review, which examines the adequacy of the contractor's written safety system, not their injury statistics.
- Contractor Prequalification Questionnaire, the broader intake covering safety, insurance, training and performance before approval.
- Contractor Incident Record, which documents the investigation of a specific incident, rather than the aggregate rate it feeds into.
- Insurance Adequacy Review, which checks whether cover limits and terms are sufficient, separate from claims history or injury trend.
- Contractor Risk Classification, which sets the inherent risk band of the work itself, independent of a contractor's track record.
Global
Contractor Safety Statistics Review requirements by country
The duty to evaluate a contractor's safety performance is close to universal, but what counts as a valid rate, and who is expected to check it, differs by regime.
OSHA 29 CFR 1904 recordkeeping; multi-employer worksite policy
Rates are calculated against a defined formula and hours worked, and the multi-employer doctrine can hold a host responsible for a contractor's exposure.
A host that never checked a contractor's OSHA 300 logs cannot show reasonable diligence if the contractor's numbers turn out to be wrong.
HSE guidance on managing contractors; RIDDOR reporting
HSE expects clients to check a contractor's safety record as part of selecting and monitoring them, though no single calculation is mandated by statute.
Enforcement history should reconcile against RIDDOR-reportable events, since self-reported figures and the regulatory record can diverge.
ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4
Certified organisations must define and apply criteria for evaluating contractors' OH&S performance, and demonstrate the criteria are actually used.
Auditors sample review records specifically to check the criteria were applied to a real decision, not just stated in a policy.
How to complete it
How to complete a contractor safety statistics review, step by step
The template calculates a score from the fields entered, but the review is only as good as the judgement applied before those fields were filled in.
An incident count with no exposure hours behind it cannot produce a rate or be compared to a benchmark. If hours are not independently verifiable, the whole calculation downstream is unsupported, whatever the contractor's summary claims.
Zero recordables across thousands of hours of hazardous work is worth investigating before it is worth crediting. Ask how incidents are reported, and to whom, because a low rate produced by suppressed reporting is worse than a moderate rate produced honestly.
A single acceptable year sitting on a worsening three-year trend is a different contractor from one with the same year and a genuinely improving trend, even though the current figure reads identically. The trend is what a renewal decision should turn on.
Figures the contractor supplies about themselves are not the same evidence as figures checked against an insurer's loss run or a regulator's record. Record which kind was obtained, and do not let a self-declared clean record substitute for one actually checked.
What auditors find
Most common contractor safety statistics review findings
The numbers on a contractor statistics review are almost always present. What an audit finds is that they were not checked against anything.
| Finding | Clause | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Injury counts recorded with no hours worked entered, so no rate can be calculated or verified. | OSHA 29 CFR 1904.7 | Require hours worked as a mandatory field before any rate is accepted, sourced from payroll or timesheets. |
| Zero-recordable figures accepted for high-risk work with no reporting culture evidence and a thin near-miss count. | ISO 45001 cl.9.1.1 | Flag implausibly low rates and require evidence of an active reporting mechanism before accepting them. |
| Figures are self-declared and never checked against an insurer's loss run, regulator filing or independent record. | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4.2 | Mark the verification status explicitly and weight self-declared figures accordingly in the decision. |
| Only the current period is reviewed; the three-year trend field is left optimistic or unsupported. | ISO 45001 cl.9.1.1 | Require the two prior periods' rates alongside the current one before the trend can be marked improving. |
| Regulatory enforcement history is recorded as none without checking the regulator's own published record. | OSHA 29 CFR 1903 | Cross-check enforcement history against the relevant regulator's public inspection and citation database. |
| Statistics marked acceptable with reservations, but the concern is never carried through to the contractor's risk classification. | ISO 45001 cl.9.3 | Route any reservation to the contractor risk classification record so the concern is not lost at sign-off. |
Case in point
Case in point: the perfect record that wasn't
A logistics operator's annual contractor review showed a haulage contractor with zero lost time injuries for three years across roughly 40,000 hours of yard work. The figures were self-declared, the trend was marked improving on that basis, and the contract was renewed without question, because the numbers beat every other contractor on the site. A later audit, triggered by an unrelated incident, sampled the contractor's own accident book and found four recordable injuries never reported to the client, alongside an understanding among drivers that reporting an injury risked losing shift allocation.
The review had asked whether the figures were independently verified, and the field had simply been left self-declared without treating that as a limitation. The fix was not a new field; it was refusing to mark a rate as improving, or a contract as renewed on that basis, until the figure had been checked against something the contractor did not control.
The template
The template, field by field
The form exactly as it installs. Every field, option, score and conditional rule is editable, and the links to other templates come with it.
5 sections
- Reference
- CON-002
- Archetype
- Review
- Record ID
- CSS-2026-000
- Scoring
- Rate comparison
- Direction
- High is good
- Singleton
- No
- Basis
- ISO 45001 cl.8.1.4
- Links
- Links Vendor
- Tags
- Contractor, Performance
- Sections
- 5
- Fields
- 40
- Follow up fields
- 0
- Repeating sections
- 0
- Links out
- 2
Header
12 fieldsReview ID*
Auto sequence. Format CSS-2026-000.
The record's own ID. Other templates point at this value.
Status*
Drives who this goes to next.
- Planned2 pts
- In progress2 pts
- Complete3 pts
- Deferred0 pts
- Open0 pts
- Closed3 pts
- Overdue0 pts
Date and Time*
Completed By*
Site*
Site ID*
Format SITE-000.
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Contractor*
Vendor ID*
Format VEN-0000.
Links to FDN-005 Vendor ID
Numbers Alone Mislead
A contractor with zero recordables may have excellent controls or may not report anything. Ask how many hours those figures cover and how incidents are reported before drawing conclusions.
Period Covered*
Hours Worked In Period*
Figures Independently Verified*
- Yes3 pts
- Self declared1 pt
Injury statistics
9 fieldsFatalities*
Lost Time Injuries*
Medical Treatment Cases
Recordable Rate*
Lost Time Rate*
Industry Benchmark
Versus Benchmark*
- Better3 pts
- Similar2 pts
- Worse0 pts
Three Year Trend*
- Improving3 pts
- Stable2 pts
- Worsening0 pts
Rate Implausibly Low*
Zero across thousands of hours in high risk work usually means under reporting, not excellence.
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Leading indicators
6 fieldsNear Miss Reports Per Year
A healthy near miss rate alongside low injuries is the pattern you want to see.
Inspections Carried Out
Toolbox Talks Delivered
Reporting Culture Evidence*
- Strong3 pts
- Some1 pt
- None0 pts
Investigation Quality Sample Reviewed*
- Good3 pts
- Adequate2 pts
- Poor0 pts
Actions From Investigations Closed*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Enforcement and claims
6 fieldsRegulatory Enforcement History*
- None3 pts
- Historic minor1 pt
- Recent or serious0 pts
Prosecutions Or Notices
Detail
Insurance Claims History
- None3 pts
- Some1 pt
- Significant0 pts
Removed From Another Site*
Ask directly. It is a fair question and the answer is revealing either way.
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
- Declined to answer0 pts
References Taken*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Assessment
7 fieldsStatistics Acceptable*
- Yes3 pts
- With reservations1 pt
- No0 pts
Concerns Raised
Affects Risk Classification*
Reviewer*
Signature*
Safety Lead*
Second Signature*
CON-002 · record IDs look like CSS-2026-000 · Links Vendor
Open in KnowellaRun it with agents
From a document you fill in to a programme that runs itself
The review itself is a comparison of numbers. What fails around it is whether those numbers were ever checked against anything the contractor did not supply themselves.
Holds the review against the contractor's history across sites, flags a renewal due, and carries any reservation forward into the risk classification.
Cross-references the contractor's reported incidents against the site's own incident and near-miss registers to catch under-reporting.
Checks regulatory enforcement history against the relevant regulator's published inspection and citation record rather than the contractor's own account.
Flags an implausibly low rate or a worsening trend for a human decision rather than letting a good-looking score pass unquestioned.
This template lives in KnowContractor — contractor management. Prequalification, approval, induction, permits and performance.
Meet KnowContractor→Glossary
Contractor Safety Statistics Review definitions and key terms
- Recordable rate
- The number of recordable injuries per a standard number of hours worked, typically 200,000 in the US formula, used to compare contractors of different sizes.
- Lost time rate
- The rate of injuries resulting in time away from work, narrower and generally more reliable than total recordables because it is harder to under-report.
- Leading indicator
- A measure that predicts future safety performance, such as near-miss reporting or inspection frequency, as distinct from a lagging indicator like an injury count.
- Reporting culture
- The degree to which workers report incidents and hazards without fear of blame, which shapes how much confidence to place in a low injury rate.
- Independently verified
- A figure checked against a source the contractor does not control, such as an insurer's record or a regulator's filing, rather than their own summary.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about contractor safety statistics review
Should a contractor with zero injuries always be favoured over one with a small number?+
No. A small, honestly reported number from a contractor with strong leading indicators is generally a better sign than a suspiciously perfect zero backed by weak reporting evidence. Context and verification matter more than the raw figure.
How many years of history should be reviewed?+
Three years, at minimum, because a single year cannot distinguish a genuine trend from ordinary variation. The three-year trend field exists so a good current year cannot be read on its own.
What weight should an industry benchmark carry?+
Useful context, not a threshold. A contractor beating a benchmark that is itself poor is not automatically acceptable. Trend and verification status matter more than the comparison.
What does it mean if a contractor was removed from another site?+
It is a direct, fair question, and a refusal to answer should be treated the same as a yes. A prior removal is one of the strongest signals available and should not be diluted by a clean set of self-declared statistics.
Does a good statistics review mean the contractor's safety system is adequate?+
No. This review only covers outcomes. A separate safety program review is needed to judge whether the written system and its implementation are adequate, and the two can disagree.
What should happen when statistics are accepted with reservations?+
The reservation needs to reach the contractor's risk classification, not stay inside this record. A reservation noted and then forgotten at renewal defeats the purpose of raising it.
Keep going
Related templates and programmes
Industries this is written for
Programmes this belongs to
Used together in Contractor Onboarding and Management
Contractor Prequalification Questionnaire
Collects a contractor's safety, insurance, training and performance information before they are approved
Contractor Risk Classification
Classifies a contractor by the risk of the work they do, from low risk services to high risk construction
Contractor Approval Record
Records the decision to approve a contractor to work on site
Contractor Safety Program Review
Reviews the contractor's own written safety programme against your requirements
Subcontractor Declaration
Records any subcontractors a contractor intends to use
Prequalification Renewal Record
Renews a contractor's prequalification before it expires
More in Prequalification
Contractor Prequalification Questionnaire
Collects a contractor's safety, insurance, training and performance information before they are approved
Contractor Risk Classification
Classifies a contractor by the risk of the work they do, from low risk services to high risk construction
Contractor Approval Record
Records the decision to approve a contractor to work on site
Contractor Safety Program Review
Reviews the contractor's own written safety programme against your requirements
Subcontractor Declaration
Records any subcontractors a contractor intends to use
Prequalification Renewal Record
Renews a contractor's prequalification before it expires
Written and reviewed by
Siddarth Singh
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Knowella
Certified Safety Professional and industrial and systems engineer with more than a decade inside food supply chain, freight and manufacturing operations. This page was written against the current text of the standards it cites, not against secondary summaries of them.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Board of Certified Safety Professionals
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- MS and BS, The Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Six Sigma Black Belt
Sources and last review. Reviewed 16 August 2026 against:
- ISO 45001:2018 clauses 8.1.4, 9.1.1 and 9.3
- OSHA 29 CFR 1904 — Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses
- OSHA 29 CFR 1903 — Inspections, Citations and Proposed Penalties
- HSE guidance on managing contractors
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with your jurisdiction’s regulator.