Lost time injury (LTI)

The threshold is time away from work, and the detail of how it is counted is what causes most of the disagreement.

The day of the injury itself does not count. The clock starts on the next rostered day or shift, and if the worker cannot work that day or shift, the injury is a lost time injury. A worker hurt at two in the afternoon who goes home and returns to normal duties the following morning has not had a lost time injury.

The measure is a day or a shift, not a number of hours, which matters for part time and shift workers. If someone is away for one whole rostered shift, the threshold is met regardless of how long that shift was. Australia's workplace injury recording standard, AS 1885.1, is the convention behind this, and Safe Work Australia's claims data treats a short minimum period of lost time as equivalent to a day or shift on the basis of typical shift lengths.

A fatality and a permanent impairment are both counted as lost time injuries, which is counterintuitive but standard. The category is about outcome severity, not only about days away.

Illness and disease are included where they are work related. Noise induced hearing loss, a work related musculoskeletal condition and occupational dermatitis can all produce lost time, and they are counted the same way as an acute injury.

For a deeper look, read TRIFR and LTIFR Explained: The Two Safety Numbers Clients Ask For. Try the free LTIFR and TRIFR Calculator.

Australian safety reporting uses several injury classifications, and the boundaries between them decide the numbers a builder reports to clients.

First aid injury. Treated on site with first aid, no medical treatment, no time lost. Recorded, not counted as a lost time injury.

Medical treatment injury. The worker required treatment by a medical practitioner but lost no time beyond the day of injury. Counted in total recordable figures, not in lost time figures. This is a significant part of why TRIFR is always higher than LTIFR.

Restricted or alternative duties. The worker cannot do their normal job but is able to do suitable alternative work. Conventionally this is not a lost time injury, because no full day or shift was lost.

Lost time injury. At least one full day or shift lost after the day of injury, or a permanent impairment, or a fatality.

The restricted duties boundary is the one that gets pushed. Genuine suitable duties are good practice and good for recovery, and return to work programmes are built on them. Nominal duties invented purely to keep an injury off the lost time count are a different thing. They distort the data a builder relies on, they are visible to anyone who looks at the duties against the injury, and they damage trust in the reporting system more than a higher number ever would.

Lost time injuries are the numerator in the lost time injury frequency rate, which expresses them against hours worked so that projects and periods of different size can be compared. The calculation itself, with a worked example, sits on the LTIFR page.

What matters here is the inputs. Two things have to be captured accurately for the rate to mean anything.

The classification. Each injury assessed consistently against the definitions above, by someone applying the same rules each time, rather than by whoever happens to write the report.

The hours. Hours actually worked across everyone on the project, including subcontractors, which is the figure most commonly estimated and most commonly wrong. A rate built on guessed hours tells you nothing, and the hours are usually the weaker half of the calculation.

Scope is the other decision. On a commercial site most of the workforce is subcontracted, so a rate that counts only the builder's direct employees describes a small fraction of the exposure. Australian clients normally expect project wide figures covering everyone on site, and prequalification questionnaires usually ask for them that way. Whatever basis is used should be stated alongside the number, because an unqualified rate invites the reader to assume the broadest one.

A lost time injury is also separate from the notification question. Whether an incident must be reported to the regulator depends on the notifiable incident definitions, not on whether a day was lost.

Counting the day of injury. The day it happened is excluded, and including it inflates the count.

Using hours instead of shifts. The threshold is a full day or shift. Part timers and shift workers are routinely misclassified by teams trying to total hours.

Inventing duties to avoid the classification. Suitable duties are legitimate and beneficial. Duties that exist only to protect a statistic are neither, and they are usually obvious.

Excluding subcontractors. If the hours include subcontractors but the injuries do not, or the reverse, the rate is meaningless.

Forgetting that fatalities and permanent impairments count. They are lost time injuries even where there were no days away in the ordinary sense.

Treating the classification as the regulator's test. Whether an incident is notifiable is decided by the notifiable incident definitions, and an injury can be notifiable without being a lost time injury, or a lost time injury without being notifiable.

Quoting a rate without the basis. State the period, the scope and the hours convention with the number, or expect it to be read on whatever basis suits the reader.