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LTIFR calculator with Australian construction benchmarks

Calculate your lost time injury frequency rate and severity rate, and compare against published Safe Work Australia construction figures.

Your reporting period

I don't have an hours figure, estimate it from headcount

Total hours worked

All hours worked by all workers in the period, including subcontractors if you report them.

Lost time injuries

One full shift or more lost.

Medical treatment injuries

Treatment beyond first aid, no time lost.

Restricted work cases

Returned on modified duties.

Days lost

For the severity rate.

Benchmark against

The closest match for a commercial builder, and materially worse than the construction average.

Your rates

7.50

LTIFR per million hours

21.67

TRIFR: 26 recordable

118.3

Severity rate, 15.8 days per LTI

LTIFR against Safe Work Australia

You7.50

Non-residential building construction14.09

Construction: whole division11.47

All industries8.50

Safe Work Australia, lost time claims frequency rate per million hours worked, five-year average to 2023–24.

Your LTIFR is 47% below non-residential building construction, and 12% below the all-industries rate of 8.50.

One more lost time injury over this period would add 0.83 to your LTIFR.

There is no Australian TRIFR benchmark

We have calculated your TRIFR above, but deliberately have not benchmarked it, because Safe Work Australia does not publish a national TRIFR figure, for construction or any other industry. They say so directly.

Any tool showing you an "industry TRIFR" is quoting one of three things: a single large contractor's internal number, an industry association survey of self-selected members, or a United States OSHA figure calculated on a different basis. None of them is a national Australian benchmark, and comparing yourself to one tells you nothing.

TRIFR is still worth tracking, against your own history, and across your own projects. Just not against a number somebody invented.

Before you put this in a board pack

These are not quite like-for-like. Safe Work Australia's rate counts accepted workers' compensation claims. Your internal LTIFR almost certainly counts any lost time injury, whether or not a claim was lodged or accepted. Your numerator is broader than theirs, so a like-for-like comparison flatters the national figure.

Claims data undercounts. The ABS found only about 30% of workers who experienced a work-related injury or illness received workers' compensation. Safe Work Australia states its own rate is likely an underestimate of all lost time injuries.

Frequency rates are lagging indicators. They count what has already gone wrong. A falling LTIFR with no change in leading indicators (reporting rates, close-out of actions, hazard identification) may mean fewer injuries or may mean fewer reports.

There is a break in the series from 2021–22. Do not present figures either side of that as a continuous trend, and note that 2023–24 data is preliminary and will be revised.

Wider context

Construction's serious claims frequency rate is 9.3 per million hours against 6.8 for all industries, a serious claim being one involving a week or more off work. Construction accounts for around 12% of all serious claims in Australia, with a median 8.4 weeks lost per claim.

A naming note worth knowing: Safe Work Australia retired its LTIFR calculator in May 2025 and now publishes the Workers' Compensation Injury Frequency Rate. The lost time figure used here is the WCIFR filtered to lost time claims, the same measure under a newer name.

Benchmark data as at 27 August 2026

Benchmarks are Safe Work Australia workers' compensation data, five-year average to 2023–24, published October 2025. Definitions of recordable injury vary between organisations, so comparisons are indicative rather than exact. Safe Work Australia publishes no national TRIFR benchmark and no breakdown by employer size; neither is offered here. Preliminary data is subject to revision.

How LTIFR is calculated, and what it means

LTIFR is the number of lost time injuries per million hours worked. Divide lost time injuries by hours worked and multiply by one million.

The definition of a lost time injury is where organisations diverge. Most commonly it is a work-related injury resulting in at least one full shift lost beyond the day of injury. Whether restricted duties count, and whether the day of injury counts, differ between organisations, and those choices move the number more than most safety interventions do.

Comparing your LTIFR to anyone else’s is only meaningful if both used the same definition, which is much less common than the comparisons suggest.

The Australian construction benchmarks

Safe Work Australia publishes serious claim frequency rates by industry. On the five-year average to 2023–24, non-residential building construction sits at 14.09 per million hours worked, the construction division at 11.47, and all industries at 8.50.

Those are the figures this calculator benchmarks against, and they are the ones worth citing because they are published and verifiable.

One ANZSIC subdivision figure that circulates (8.25 for heavy and civil engineering construction) is arithmetically inconsistent with the division total and has been excluded here rather than reproduced.

There is no Australian TRIFR benchmark

Total recordable injury frequency rate is widely used in tender responses and prequalification questionnaires, and it is frequently accompanied by a claim that the number is above or below the industry average.

Safe Work Australia does not publish a TRIFR benchmark. There is no national figure to compare against, and there is no published breakdown by employer size either.

So when a document says a TRIFR is better than the industry average, it is comparing against something that does not exist, or against a private dataset it is not naming. The tool calculates TRIFR because it is useful for tracking your own trend, and declines to benchmark it because there is nothing legitimate to benchmark it to.

Why LTIFR is a poor safety measure on its own

LTIFR counts a fatality and a sprained ankle identically, and it counts nothing at all on a site where hours are high and reporting is discouraged. It is a lagging indicator of a small subset of outcomes.

A small builder can have a genuinely excellent LTIFR for two years through sample size alone. The same builder can then have one serious incident and a catastrophic-looking rate, without anything about the underlying system having changed.

Use it for trend over time within your own business rather than as a comparative score, and read it alongside severity, near-miss reporting rates and the leading indicators that describe what you are actually doing. A rising near-miss report rate is usually good news, and LTIFR cannot tell you that.

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