The Daily Dig
Associated Builders and Contractors released its 2026 Health and Safety Performance Report this week during Construction Safety Week. Top performing ABC construction firms participating in the STEP Health and Safety Management System are achieving total recordable incident rates 85% lower than the broader construction industry, putting them 686% safer than the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics construction average.
The report draws from more than 1.3 billion hours of work completed in 2025 across construction, heavy construction, civil engineering, and specialty trades. Four practices show the strongest correlation with lower TRIR and DART rates.
Daily toolbox talks reduce TRIR by 59% and DART rates by 61% compared to monthly talks. Substance abuse prevention programs, including drug and alcohol testing where permitted, cut TRIR by 55% and DART rates by 57%. Best-practice safety meetings lower TRIR by 52% and DART rates by 54%. Companies that actively bring front-line workers into safety feedback reduce TRIR by 55% and DART rates by 57%.
The report also identifies six core leading indicators that top programs use to identify and eliminate hazards before incidents occur: planning for project health and safety, top leadership engagement, leading indicators, incident investigation, trailing indicators, and behavior based safety observations.
Established in 1989, STEP is a no-cost framework available to contractors and suppliers. Any construction contractor can participate. The 2026 report is sponsored by DEWALT.
TheJobWalk Thoughts
The gap between daily and monthly toolbox talks, 59% fewer recordable incidents, is not a rounding error. That difference compounds through a company's safety record over time, and safety record touches EMR, which affects premiums, bonding, and prequalification thresholds on a lot of work. The report does not make that connection explicitly, but any contractor who has been through a prequalification questionnaire knows how directly incident history follows them into the next bid.
The front-line engagement finding is the one subcontractors should sit with. A safety program that does not have genuine buy-in from foremen and field leads rarely survives contact with the actual jobsite. Leadership sets the standard, but the people running crews every day determine whether it holds.
STEP costs nothing and is open to any contractor. For firms not currently measuring and benchmarking their safety data, that is the most direct starting point the industry offers.
