How Do You Write a Construction Incident Report?

1. Get the injured person care. Call 911 or take them to the care your site plan names.
2. Make the area safe and keep it as it was: barricade it, leave tools and materials in place, and photograph everything before anything moves.
3. Find out whose employee it is. On a multi-employer site the GC's superintendent should hear at once, but the injured worker's employer does the recording and reporting.
4. Decide whether OSHA must be told. 29 CFR 1904.39 requires a report within 8 hours of a work-related fatality, and within 24 hours of an in-patient hospitalization, an amputation or the loss of an eye.
5. Take witness statements while memories are fresh, each in the witness's own words, signed and dated.

The report to OSHA goes by phone or in person to the nearest Area Office, to 1-800-321-OSHA (1-800-321-6742), or through the reporting application on osha.gov; a message on a closed office's answering machine doesn't count (1904.39). OSHA defines in-patient hospitalization as "a formal admission to the in-patient service of a hospital or clinic for care or treatment", and a hospital stay for observation or diagnostic testing only is not reportable.

A recordable case needs an OSHA Form 301 "or an equivalent form" within seven calendar days of learning about it (1904.29). An equivalent form "has the same information, is as readable and understandable, and is completed using the same instructions" as the OSHA form, so a company incident report that covers fields 1–18 can be the 301 (1904.29(b)(4)). The form asks that fields 14 to 17 carry no personally identifiable information such as names or phone numbers.

OSHA's incident investigation page warns: "It is far too easy, and often misleading, to conclude that carelessness or failure to follow a procedure alone was the cause of an incident." It asks why the rule wasn't followed, whether production pressure played a part, and whether the procedure was out of date or the training inadequate (OSHA, Incident Investigation). It also encourages investigating close calls, "in which a worker might have been hurt if the circumstances had been slightly different."

Ask why until the answer is something the company can change: a material that should have been hoisted, a schedule that pushed a crew, a missing step in the task's hazard analysis. "Worker was careless" ends the investigation without fixing anything.

The ladder standard already says "An employee shall not carry any object or load that could cause the employee to lose balance and fall" (1926.1053(b)(22)), so the corrective action answers why the duct was carried at all. Under 1904.7, "using butterfly bandages or Steri-Strips" is first aid, while sutures and staples are medical treatment: had urgent care closed the cut with Steri-Strips alone, the case would not have been recordable. It is Ridgeline's case to record, not the GC's, because 1904.31 puts it on the log of the employer that supervises the worker day to day.

How to enter it, column by column, is in how to fill out the OSHA 300 log. Note the incident in the accidents part of that day's daily log too, without the medical details. For the GC's wider job, see the general contractor's guide.

Care first, then the scene, then the 8- or 24-hour reporting decision. Write the facts the way Form 301 asks for them, find a root cause the company can change, and let those facts decide whether the case goes on the 300 log.

Conflo runs bids, RFIs, submittals, daily logs, change orders and pay apps for commercial GCs, and its daily log has an Accidents section; it has no incident report or OSHA recordkeeping tool today. Join the waitlist.

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1. Incident Investigation — Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Read October 22, 2026.
2. 29 CFR 1904.39, Reporting fatalities, hospitalizations, amputations, and losses of an eye — eCFR (Office of the Federal Register). Read October 22, 2026.
3. 29 CFR 1904.29, Forms — eCFR (Office of the Federal Register). Read October 22, 2026.
4. 29 CFR 1904.7, General recording criteria — eCFR (Office of the Federal Register). Read October 22, 2026.
5. 29 CFR 1904.31, Covered employees — eCFR (Office of the Federal Register). Read October 22, 2026.
6. 29 CFR 1926.1053, Ladders — eCFR (Office of the Federal Register). Read October 22, 2026.
7. OSHA Forms for Recording Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (300, 300A, 301) — Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Read October 22, 2026.