ABC Data Shows Structured Safety Programs Cut Incident Rates by 85% Versus Industry Average
According to Construction Executive, Associated Builders and Contractors has released its 2026 Health and Safety Performance Report, and the headline number is hard to ignore: contractors participating in ABC’s STEP Health and Safety Management System achieve incident rates 686% safer than the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics construction industry average, reducing total recordable incident rates by 85%.
For subcontractors competing on projects where general contractors and owners set minimum safety thresholds, that gap is not just a statistic. It is a competitive divide.
Background
ABC’s STEP (Safety Training and Evaluation Process) program was established in 1989. According to the report, cited by Construction Executive, ABC’s research draws on more than 1.3 billion hours of work completed by participants in the construction industry. The 2026 report identifies specific practices tied to better safety outcomes, including the frequency of toolbox talks, and six core leading indicators that companies can use to identify hazards before incidents occur. Those leading indicators include planning for project health and safety and top leadership engagement, among others.
The report has tracked these results annually for nine years, giving it a longitudinal credibility that one-off surveys lack. The consistent finding across that time: structured safety management systems produce measurable, repeatable results.
Analysis
An 85% reduction in total recordable incident rates is not a marginal improvement. It is the kind of difference that separates companies that can bid on major federal, industrial, and commercial projects from those that cannot.
Here is why this matters beyond the safety merits. Most large general contractors and owners in sectors like oil and gas, petrochemical, and heavy industrial set Experience Modification Rate (EMR) thresholds as a condition of being approved to work on their sites. An EMR above 1.0 is often disqualifying. For smaller subcontractors, a single serious incident can spike that number and lock them out of bid lists for three years, which is how long incidents stay in the EMR calculation window.
The STEP data suggests a direct mechanism for keeping EMR in check. When toolbox talk frequency goes up, when leadership is actively engaged, and when hazard identification systems are running before a project starts rather than in response to an incident, the underlying incident rate drops. Lower incident rates mean fewer workers’ compensation claims. Fewer claims mean a lower EMR over time. A lower EMR means access to more work and, critically, lower insurance premiums.
The six core leading indicators identified in the report are particularly relevant here. Leading indicators are process-based rather than outcome-based. They measure what a company is doing to prevent incidents rather than counting incidents after they happen. This is the direction OSHA, large owners, and risk managers have been pushing for years. A subcontractor that can demonstrate active use of leading indicators is telling a very different story to a prime contractor’s prequalification team than one that can only point to a clean year on the lagging side.
The frequency of toolbox talks as a specific callout in the report is also worth noting. Toolbox talks are low-cost, high-frequency interventions. For a small subcontractor running crews across multiple sites, formalizing and documenting toolbox talks is one of the most accessible steps available. It requires no significant capital investment, and the documentation itself becomes evidence of a functioning safety culture during audits and prequalification reviews.
The broader takeaway from the ABC data is that safety performance at this level is not accidental. It correlates with systems, structure, and consistent leadership involvement. That is a message field service companies in construction, oil and gas, and infrastructure can act on directly.
What It Means for Subcontractors
- EMR protection starts with process. The 85% reduction in recordable incident rates tied to structured safety programs is the clearest available argument for formalizing your safety management system before you need it. Waiting until after an incident is too late.
- Toolbox talk frequency is a tracked differentiator. The ABC report specifically calls out toolbox talk frequency as a factor. Formalizing and documenting these talks costs almost nothing and pays off in both incident prevention and prequalification documentation.
- Leading indicators are becoming a bid requirement. Planning for project safety and top leadership engagement are listed among the six core leading indicators in the report. Primes and owners increasingly want to see these systems in place, not just a good EMR number.
- Nine years of data reduces the “it won’t happen to us” argument. The longitudinal nature of this report means the performance gap between STEP participants and the industry average is not a one-year anomaly. It reflects consistent, structural differences in how companies operate.
- STEP is open to ABC members. For smaller subcontractors looking for a framework rather than building one from scratch, the STEP program offers a structured entry point established in 1989 with a track record behind it.
