Construction Safety Trends That Matter: 75,000+ Incidents Analyzed

The findings are based on analysis of 75,000+ safety incidents recorded in HammerTech between 2018 and 2024.

This dataset draws from one of the broadest construction safety communities in the world. 

HammerTech today:

• Has been used on over 70,000 projects (active and completed) across the U.S., Canada, ANZ, and the UK & Ireland

• Is trusted by over 600 main contractors and 400,000 subcontractors

• Has facilitated over 5 million individual worker inductions

Every day, site teams across commercial, industrial, and civil sectors leverage the platform to capture site safety activity in real time.

Unlike self-reported surveys, this analysis reflects this real-world activity, surfacing trends no single contractor or project could spot alone. 

Because we’ve paired quantitative findings with commentary from top contractors, the insights aren’t abstract—they’re grounded in daily site realities.

The result? One of the most comprehensive views of site safety trends in the industry today.

The data was aggregated, anonymized, and adjusted for workforce size, so patterns are statistically significant and not skewed by the size of any one contractor.

Injury-to-incident ratios were analyzed for HammerTech customers across roughly 79,000 incidents in HammerTech across the 2018–2024 period. A longitudinal approach was employed, measuring percentage change within each contractor’s self-consistent reporting framework. Variations in individual reporting standards were controlled by limiting comparison to temporal shifts within the same methodology, thereby ensuring internal validity.

Injury mechanism classifications from HammerTech data were standardized by mapping customer-defined custom categories to the platform’s default taxonomy. This normalization ensured comparability of injury sources across contractors, enabling consistent cross organizational analysis.

To understand the scale of activity, we looked at the number of safety processes recorded in HammerTech (such as orientations, inspections, permits, and meetings). These counts were aggregated at the contractor level and a adjusted for project size and system usage, giving an illustrative view of how many processes are being run — rather than a benchmark of performance.

Injury timestamps from 2018–2024 were grouped into 15-minute intervals. The data was normalized against the number of workers present on site, providing a clearer picture of patterns across the working day.

In HammerTech, an 'incident' is any unplanned event that affects, or has the potential to affect, the health and safety of those on site.

This can range from a minor first-aid case or near miss to more serious injuries, property damage, or environmental impacts.

Contractors use the incident module to:

• Record details of what happened, when, and where.

• Capture evidence such as photos, notes, and corrective actions.

• Classify the type and severity of the incident.

• Track follow-up investigations and outcomes.

Logging incidents digitally ensures transparency, consistency, and accountability across projects — and provides data that can help identify trends and prevent recurrence.

Safety reports come from regulatory bodies like OSHA, Safe Work Australia, or the BLS provide essential benchmarks. But they often focus on higher-severity incidents and long-term national trends.

'Site Safety at Scale 2025' adds another lens.

It analyzes all incident types recorded in HammerTech — including near misses, first aids, and other lower-severity events that fall beneath formal reporting thresholds.

By surfacing patterns in these day-to-day incidents, it complements regulatory benchmarks with insights no single project or national dataset could capture alone.

Key Points of Difference:

1. Granularity: The report includes near misses, first aids, and incident reporting behaviors that rarely appear in national benchmarks, giving a fuller picture of day-to-day safety activity.

2. Comparative scale: The findings draw from over 75,000 incidents over six years, strengthened by HammerTech’s use on 70,000+ projects worldwide. That scale surfaces statistically significant patterns no single site could see alone.

3. Practical framing: Each section is built to spark reflection, not prescribe change. The report combines clear data points with contractor perspectives and questions safety leaders can take straight into briefings.

4. Sector relevance: The dataset reflects activity from commercial and civil contractors, offering sharper insights for large-scale builders than broader datasets that also include residential construction or unrelated sectors.

This isn’t a compliance checklist, product brochure or benchmarking document. It’s a field-first snapshot designed to complement established benchmarks — giving leaders visibility into how safety actually plays out on today’s jobsites, and supporting smarter, context-driven decisions.

This isn’t a compliance checklist, product brochure or benchmarking document. It’s a field-first snapshot designed to complement established benchmarks — giving leaders visibility into how safety actually plays out on today’s jobsites, and supporting smarter site safety conversations and context-driven decisions.

Not at all.

The insights are designed for the entire industry, not just HammerTech customers. Whether you’re a GC, subcontractor, owner, or HSE manager, the report provides:

• Data-backed trends on incident timing, injury mechanisms, and reporting trends

• Conversation starters for safety discussions, helping teams reflect in their own context.

• Industry-wide context to sharpen focus areas, regardless of the systems you use

HammerTech customers may notice some parallels with their own data, but the report is purpose-built to help any safety leader plan smarter and protect workers.

The report draws analysis of 75,000+ incidents recorded in HammerTech from 2018–2024.

This is the first data-backed site safety report leveraging HammerTech data. We will refresh insights periodically.

We’d love for you to share the insights!  The best way is to share the link to this page, so they can download their own copy.

That way, everyone gets the latest version and we can keep the conversation going.

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