How to Check Your Contractor's OSHA Safety Record Before Hiring

Why an OSHA violation lookup matters before you sign

Before you hand a contractor a check, you should know one thing the reviews on Yelp can't tell you: does this company keep workers safe? An OSHA violation lookup answers that. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspects employers and publishes the results — citations, penalties, and injury data — as a public record. A few minutes of contractor safety check work now can save you months of grief later.

Homeowners ask three versions of the same question all the time: Is my contractor safe? Does my contractor have OSHA violations? How do I check a contractor's OSHA record? This guide walks through exactly how to answer all three.

Step 1: Get the contractor's legal name

Marketing names and DBAs are not the same as the legal entity OSHA inspects. Ask for:

• The legal business name on the bid (look at the top of the proposal).
• The FEIN or state license number, if available.
• The state(s) the company operates in.

You will need these to disambiguate a contractor safety check if there are multiple companies with similar names.

Step 2: Run the OSHA inspection history search

You have two options.

Option A — the official OSHA database. Go to osha.gov, find the establishment search, type the contractor's name, narrow by state. You'll get a list of inspections with dates, citations, and penalties. It works, but the interface is built for compliance officers, not homeowners — there's no grade, no benchmark, and renamed companies often appear as separate entities.

Option B — SafeCheck. Run a free OSHA violation lookup on SafeCheck. You get the same federal data, but resolved across prior names and DBAs, scored A–F, and benchmarked against other contractors in the same trade and state.

Step 3: Read the contractor OSHA record

Once you have results, look for four things:

1. Citation type mix. Serious, Willful, and Repeat are the categories that matter. One or two serious citations is normal at scale. A pattern of willful or repeat citations is a red flag.
2. Penalty totals. OSHA doesn't issue large penalties lightly. Six-figure totals or a single five-figure penalty deserve a follow-up question.
3. Recency. A safety record from 2009 is less relevant than one from 2023. Look at the most recent inspection date.
4. Accidents and fatalities. If the contractor has had a fatal incident on a previous jobsite, that should weigh heavily — and it should come up in the conversation.

Step 4: Ask the contractor about what you found

This is the part most homeowners skip. If you find something, bring it up. Good contractors will explain the citation, what they changed, and how they prevent it now. Bad contractors will get defensive or deny the record exists.

If you'd like a list of safety-related questions to ask, see our guide on 5 questions to ask your contractor about workplace safety.

Step 5: Make the call

A clean OSHA record is not a guarantee of good work, and a citation is not an automatic deal-breaker. The point is to hire a safe contractor with eyes open. The contractor's safety record tells you how the jobsite looks when no homeowner is watching — and that's the version of the company you're actually hiring.

Ready to run one? Search any contractor's OSHA record now. Free, no signup.