Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) released its 2025 Health and Safety Performance Report, an annual guide to construction jobsite health and safety best practices. ABC published the report ahead of Construction Safety Week 2025, May 5-9, to support its industry-wide call to action for safer jobsites and a stronger safety culture.
The report shows the positive impacts of construction companies participating in ABC’s STEP Health and Safety Management System, which enables top-performing ABC members to achieve incident rates 658 percent safer than the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics’ construction industry average, reducing total recordable incident rates by 85 percent, according to ABC. Established in 1989, STEP provides contractors and suppliers with a framework for measuring health and safety data and benchmarking with peers in the industry.
“Transforming the status quo to set the expectation that all incidents are preventable creates a culture where health and safety are elevated to core values, a moral obligation for employers and employees,” says Greg Sizemore, ABC vice president of health, safety, environment, and workforce development. “Priorities change frequently, but values remain consistent. The tools in ABC’s safety report draw the blueprint for industry leaders and workers to create a culture of health and safety, win and deliver work to communities without incident, and protect the construction industry’s most valuable resource: its workforce.”
ABC’s research on more than 1 billion work hours completed by participants in the construction, heavy construction, civil engineering, and specialty trades in 2024 identified the following foundations of industry-leading safety best practices:
- New hire safety orientation: Companies that conduct an in-depth orientation of new employees into health and safety culture, systems, and processes experience total recordable incident rates (TRIR) 52 percent lower than companies that limit their orientations to basic health and safety compliance topics. Additionally, days away, restricted, or transferred (DART) rates were reduced by 56 percent.
- Substance abuse prevention programs: Robust substance abuse prevention programs and policies with provisions for drug and alcohol testing, where permitted, led to a 52 per cent reduction in TRIR and a 55 percent reduction in DART rates.
- Frequency of “toolbox” talks: Companies that conduct daily, 15-minute to 30-minute “toolbox” talks reduced TRIR rates by 78 percent and DART rates by 79 percent compared to companies that held them monthly.
- Top management engagement: Employer involvement at the highest level of company management in safety best practices produced a 49 percent reduction in TRIR and a 52 percent reduction in DART rates.
- Leading indicators: Tracking and reviewing activities carried out to prevent and control injuries, such as safety training, new hire safety orientation, and substance abuse prevention, led to a 59 percent reduction in TRIR and a 60 percent reduction in DART rates.
“The 2025 Health and Safety Performance Report and STEP will help any contractor or supplier reinforce their commitment to the well-being of their workforce,” says Sizemore. “If we choose to lead, if we choose to commit and if we choose to transform, together we can ensure every construction worker goes home safer, happier, healthier and more fulfilled every single day.”