Exploring States’ Department of Transportation’s Safety and Health Prequalification Criteria for Best Practices

Performance-based contractor prequalification allows a construction client to evaluate contractors’ past performance on similar work, improving the likelihood of high-quality work being performed. Occupational safety and health criteria are sometimes included in such prequalification criteria. What metrics are predictive of safe future work? The objectives of this research were to (1) understand best practices in safety and health performance measurement, (2) conduct an initial desktop screening of all fifty US state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) for their publicly available safety and health prequalification criteria, and (3) propose a path forward for a state DOT research inquiry to raise the level of safety and health performance of all contractors by understanding their views of the feasibility and effectiveness of a list of possible leading indicators. Lagging indicators (injury rates, experience modification rates, regulatory citations) are traditional measures; they are shown to measure past performance but are not predictive of future safe work. There is no consensus on viable leading indicators in the discipline of safety science. Seventeen state DOTs require safety metrics of some kind as part of their prequalification process. Including safety and health criteria in the prequalification process provides an opportunity to help underperforming contractors, particularly small and historically underutilized businesses, raise the quality of their site safety and health performance.