NYC Injury Headlines

Trade-specific Injury Rates at a Large Construction Project

Construction as an industry has a high injury rate, as documented in annual BLS surveys and other data sources. CFOI contains trade-specific data that allows a determination of rates for fatal injuries for specific trades, but trade-specific data is not readily available for non-fatal injuries. Surveillance data is collected in order to design, implement and evaluate prevention programs. Trade-specific surveillance data for construction workers is necessary if we are to understand the causes of injuries, and find ways to prevent them.

We have monitored injuries from a large construction project from 1990-1997. All injuries were treated at the George Washington University emergency department, and data on each injury was abstracted. We have obtained hours worked through the project by contractor and developed trade specific rates for this project. We will present these trade specific rates, discuss how these data differ from BLS data, and compare our rates to trade specific data collected on other large construction sites. We will also present a model for implementing trade specific surveillance on other construction sites.