The OSHA inspection record guide.

Every OSHA enforcement inspection produces a record in the OSHA Information System (OIS), surfaced publicly via Establishment Search at www.osha.gov/ords/imis/establishment.html. The records cover six programmatic categories per OSHA's Field Operations Manual:

Imminent danger

Hazard with reasonable certainty of death or serious physical harm immediately or before the imminence can be eliminated through normal enforcement procedures.

Fatality / catastrophe

Triggered by a worker death or three-or-more-employee hospitalization. Reported by the employer within 8 or 24 hours respectively.

Complaint

A worker, union, or other complainant raised an issue. Strongest signal for vendor screening.

Referral

Another agency, the media, or a previous OSHA inspection flagged the site.

Programmed

Site-Specific Targeting (SST), National Emphasis Programs, Local Emphasis Programs. Industry-wide sampling. Less signal about a specific employer than complaint or fatality inspections.

Follow-up

Verifies abatement of a prior cited hazard.

Why category matters for vendor screening: a complaint-triggered inspection signals a worker raised an issue; a fatality / catastrophe inspection signals an event already occurred; a programmed inspection is industry sampling and carries less signal about the specific employer.

OSHA categorizes citations under the OSH Act §17 (29 U.S.C. §666) framework and 29 CFR 1903. The categories drive penalty exposure and procurement implications.

Willful

Employer knew of a hazardous condition and either intentionally violated the standard or showed plain indifference. Requires evidence of conscious disregard. The only category that can support criminal referral when paired with an employee death.

Repeated

A substantially similar violation was previously cited and that prior citation became a final order within the last five years (OSHA Field Operations Manual, Chapter 4). The "substantially similar" test looks at hazard, not standard number.

Serious

Substantial probability of death or serious physical harm, AND the employer knew or should have known of the hazard. The "should have known" prong makes Serious the workhorse citation type.

Other-Than-Serious

Direct relationship to safety/health, but unlikely to cause death or serious physical harm.

Failure to Abate

Hazard cited in a prior inspection was not corrected by the abatement date. Penalty accrues per day past the deadline.

De Minimis

Technical violation with no direct or immediate relationship to safety/health. No penalty.

The current maximums are from OSHA's January 7, 2025 memo, effective for penalties assessed after January 15, 2025:

Serious

$16,550 per violation

Other-Than-Serious

$16,550 per violation

Posting Requirements

$16,550 per violation

Failure to Abate

$16,550 per day beyond the abatement date

Willful or Repeated

$165,514 per violation (Willful minimum: $11,823)

Two interpretive callouts that matter for federal contracting:

• Each instance can be cited separately. A Willful covering 10 exposed employees can stack to 10 × $165,514 = $1,655,140 before contest.
• Failure-to-Abate accrues daily. A 30-day overrun = up to $496,500 on a single uncorrected hazard.
• Posted numbers are initial. Informal settlement typically reduces by 30-50% (per DOL OIG audits of OSHA penalty practices).

Three primary tools, each with a distinct use case:

Establishment Search

www.osha.gov/ords/imis/establishment.html. Search by employer name plus state. Returns inspection-level records. Best for: one named vendor.

Industry Search

www.osha.gov/ords/imis/industrysearch.html. Search by NAICS / SIC. Returns inspection counts by industry. Best for: benchmarking a vendor against peers.

Severe Injury Reports (SIR)

www.osha.gov/severeinjury. Hospitalizations and amputations reported under 29 CFR 1904.39. Best for: catching recent events not yet reflected in citations.

A sample inspection page shows these fields, each with an interpretive role:

Activity Nr

Unique inspection ID. Use this when filing FOIAs or pulling Citation/Penalty PDFs.

Open / Closed dates

Time gap is a complexity proxy.

Inspection Type

Maps to the six categories in section 1.

Violation Items

Each row: Standard cited (e.g., 1926.501(b)(1) for fall protection), Issuance Date, Type (S / W / R / O / U for Serious / Willful / Repeated / Other / Unclassified), Current Penalty, Initial Penalty, Final Order Date, Abatement.

FTA flag

Failure to Abate flag, if present.

Emphasis Programs

Tells you why OSHA was on-site.

Initial vs Current Penalty

The delta is the settlement signal, typically 30-50% reduction post-informal-settlement.

The headline section. Most SERP results on "how to read OSHA citations" are written for employers facing citations, not for buyers screening employers. Here is the framework procurement officers should use, derived from FAR 9.104 responsibility factors:

• One Serious citation alone is not disqualifying. OSHA cites a high percentage of inspections, and Serious is the modal type. A clean five-year record on a high-hazard NAICS is unusual.
• A Willful citation is a serious flag, but not automatic disqualification. Look for: was it contested and downgraded; was a settlement reached; what was the abatement evidence.
• Pattern matters more than any single citation. A working decision rule:
  • 3 or more Serious citations of the same standard within 36 months → systemic control failure
  • Any Repeated citation → prior abatement didn't stick
  • Any Willful + fatality → escalate to legal / contracting officer
  • Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP) listing → near-automatic exclusion for safety-sensitive scope
• Tie to FAR 9.104-1(d), "satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics", and FAR 9.104-3(b) responsibility determinations. OSHA history is one input, never the whole determination.

OSHA inspections are one input into the broader integrity pillar (DOL Wage and Hour, OSHA, FAPIIS, court records, SAM exclusions). DiligenceDesk pulls Establishment Search, normalises the legal-name-vs-trade-name fuzziness, time-buckets findings, and surfaces the SVEP listing as its own evidence row.

See the methodology page for the verdict ladder, the DOL Wage and Hour search guide for the separate WHD enforcement dataset (often confused with WHD-investigated OSHA fields in the WHD dataset), and Step 3 of the contractor due-diligence checklist for where labor and safety enforcement fits in the workflow.