OSHA Establishment Search: How to Use the Inspection Database

OSHA Establishment Search is the free public database that lets anyone look up the OSHA inspection history of any U.S. workplace. Maintained by the Department of Labor at osha.gov, the tool exposes inspection-by-inspection records going back to 1972 — the year OSHA was created. Search by company name, address, SIC or NAICS industry code, or by state, and the results return every inspection OSHA has performed at the establishment, with the date, scope, type, citations issued, penalty amounts and inspector identifiers attached.

The Establishment Search tool is the workhorse for several professional groups. Construction general contractors use it to pre-qualify subcontractor candidates by reviewing OSHA history before bidding awards. Insurance underwriters check it during workers compensation rate-setting. Attorneys use it for litigation support when employee injuries are involved. Investors and corporate development teams use it during M&A due diligence. Academics use it for safety research. Members of the public use it to make informed choices about employers and workplaces.

Understanding what the data does and does not show is the key to using the tool well. The Establishment Search returns enforcement records — inspections, citations and penalties — not voluntary safety performance, near-miss data or non-OSHA workplace injury statistics. A clean Establishment Search record means OSHA has not cited the employer for violations during inspections; it does not necessarily mean the employer has a flawless safety record. Inspection coverage is uneven across employers, with high-hazard industries inspected more frequently than low-hazard ones.

This guide explains how to use the OSHA Establishment Search tool effectively, what each data element means, the related public databases that complement it (Severe Injury Reports, Fatality and Catastrophe Investigations, ITA injury tracking), the most common use cases for the tool, and the limitations to keep in mind when interpreting results. The goal is to make you fluent in OSHA enforcement data and able to draw the right conclusions from what you find.

Accessing the tool is straightforward. Go to osha.gov, click Data on the top navigation bar, then click Establishment Search under the OSHA Statistics heading. The direct URL is osha.gov/pls/imis/establishment.html. The page presents a search form with fields for establishment name, state, SIC code, NAICS code, inspection date range and inspection type. Fill in the fields you know — at minimum the establishment name and state — and click Submit. Results appear in a table, sorted by inspection date.

Searching by establishment name is the most common entry point. Type the company name (or the part of it likely to appear in OSHA records) into the Establishment Name field. The tool uses a contains-match, so "ABC Construction" returns any establishment with those words in the registered name. Try variations if the first result is incomplete — "ABC Const", "ABC Inc", or with the parent company name. Larger employers may be registered under a slightly different legal name than the brand name customers know.

Searching by SIC or NAICS code returns all inspections of establishments in that industry. NAICS code 2362 returns all commercial building construction inspections. NAICS 6221 returns hospital inspections. This is the gateway for industry-level analysis — comparing one employer's inspection rate to industry peers, or for academics studying patterns. Narrow further by state to focus on a specific market. The result lists are often long, and the tool limits to the most recent records when the query is too broad.

Searching by city and state without an establishment name returns all inspections in that geographic area, useful for area-wide analysis. Searching by inspection date range is useful for following enforcement campaigns or post-accident inspections. The tool's flexibility allows combinations: "all inspections in Texas of NAICS 2389 establishments between 2024 and 2026" pulls a specific slice for analysis.

The result table shows one row per inspection. Each row contains a unique inspection number (used by OSHA internally), the date the inspection opened, the establishment name, the city and state, the SIC and NAICS codes assigned, the type of inspection (programmed planned, unprogrammed complaint-driven, follow-up, accident, referral) and the scope (full inspection or partial). Click the inspection number to drill into the details for that specific inspection.

The detail page for each inspection is where the substantive information lives. It shows the inspection start and close dates, the activity dates spanning the on-site fieldwork, the scope keywords that summarize what the inspector examined, the citations issued (each linked to the specific OSHA standard violated), the initial penalty amount, the final penalty amount after settlement or contest, the abatement status (whether the violation was corrected) and any related case numbers (linked inspections that were combined or related accidents).

Citations are the substance of inspection results. Each citation links to a specific OSHA standard — for example, 29 CFR 1926.501(b)(1) for unprotected fall hazards in construction, or 29 CFR 1910.147 for lockout/tagout violations in general industry. Each citation has a severity classification: Other-than-Serious, Serious, Willful, Repeat or Failure-to-Abate. Penalty amounts are statutory; OSHA can impose up to about $16,000 for Serious and up to $161,000 for Willful or Repeat violations under the 2026 maximums.

Beyond the citations, the inspection record shows whether the case is closed or still open, the final penalty after any negotiation or contest, whether the employer entered into a settlement agreement (which may reduce penalties in exchange for additional safety commitments), and the abatement status indicating whether the cited hazards have been corrected. An open case with un-abated citations is a more significant red flag than a closed case with all violations corrected.

For general contractors using the tool to pre-qualify subcontractors, the workflow is concrete. Pull each candidate's establishment record covering the past five years. Note the number of inspections (a high number is not automatically negative if the firm operates in many high-hazard environments), the citation rate per inspection, the severity of citations issued (Serious and Willful are weightier than Other-than-Serious), and any patterns of repeat violations. A subcontractor with multiple Serious or Willful citations across several inspections is a substantial risk indicator that the construction manager should weigh in selection.

For attorneys representing injured workers or families, the Establishment Search is the starting point for liability research. A pattern of OSHA violations of the standard related to the injury — fall protection violations preceding a fatal fall, machine guarding violations preceding an amputation — supports the legal argument that the employer was on notice of the hazard and chose not to abate. The attorney pulls every inspection record, every citation, and every related case, and uses the documentary evidence as part of the case file.

For insurance underwriters, the Establishment Search supports workers compensation rate adjustment and policy decisions. Employers with substantial OSHA enforcement history typically pay higher workers compensation premiums; employers with clean records may qualify for credits. The insurance carrier reviews the data alongside experience modification factors (the loss-history-based rate adjustment) and other underwriting inputs to set the final premium. Some carriers refuse coverage entirely when the OSHA history is severe enough.

For investors and M&A due diligence teams evaluating a target company, the Establishment Search provides labor-and-safety risk indicators that traditional financial diligence misses. A target company with extensive OSHA history may face future enforcement liability, regulatory scrutiny, employee turnover and labor relations issues that affect post-acquisition integration. Pulling the records for every operating location creates a portfolio-level view of the safety risk inherited at closing.

Several related public OSHA databases supplement the Establishment Search. The Severe Injury Reports database covers employer-reported severe injuries (amputations, hospitalizations, eye losses) submitted under the OSHA recording requirement that took effect in 2015. The Fatality and Catastrophe Investigations database covers worker deaths and incidents involving three or more hospitalizations. The Injury Tracking Application (ITA) collects 300A summary data from employers with 250+ employees and from employers with 20+ employees in high-hazard industries.

The Severe Injury Reports database is particularly useful for identifying hazardous workplaces that may not yet have OSHA inspection history. An employer with several severe injury reports but no OSHA citations could be a recent reporting case where inspection has not yet caught up. Conversely, repeated severe injury reports without inspection follow-up suggest under-resourced OSHA jurisdiction or specific local circumstances that affect enforcement.

The ITA injury data, when available, gives a normalized view of workplace injury rates. ITA-mandated employers report their annual injury counts (Total Recordable Cases, Days Away/Restricted/Transfer cases, fatalities) along with hours worked, allowing calculation of TRIR and DART rates that can be compared to industry averages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The combination of ITA injury data and Establishment Search inspection data provides the closest thing to a full safety performance picture for an employer.

For state-plan states, equivalent searches exist on each state's OSHA program website. California's Cal/OSHA inspection database is searchable through DIR.ca.gov. Washington's Department of Labor and Industries provides similar data. State-plan jurisdictions typically have searchable databases parallel to the federal tool, though the data structure varies. Researchers analyzing employers with operations across federal and state-plan jurisdictions need to combine searches from both sources for a complete picture.

For users running large-scale or repeated searches, the IMIS data is also available for download in bulk through OSHA's Open Data Initiative at enforcedata.dol.gov. The downloadable files include inspection records, citations, accident details and other tables in CSV format suitable for analysis in Excel, R or Python. The bulk data is updated quarterly. Researchers and consultancies often use the bulk files for systematic analysis of multiple employers or for industry-wide statistical work.

The OSHA Data API provides programmatic access to the same records for automated workflows. Construction technology firms, ESG analytics platforms, insurance vendors and litigation support providers integrate the API into their own products. Each query returns JSON results matching the same data shown in the public web interface, but accessible at scale and combinable with other data sources.

Privacy and accuracy considerations matter for users of the public data. The records are public information by federal law, but using them to make adverse decisions about individuals (employees, contractors) raises Fair Credit Reporting Act considerations in some contexts. Always verify the establishment name carefully — a search match alone does not prove identity, and similarly named businesses can produce false positives. Investigate ambiguities before drawing conclusions.

Data corrections are also possible. Employers who discover errors in their Establishment Search records can request corrections through OSHA's IMIS data quality process. The correction request must include documentation supporting the proposed change. OSHA reviews and either accepts the correction or denies it with explanation. The correction process is slow — typically 30 to 90 days — and requires patience, but it does work for employers willing to invest the effort.

For benchmarking purposes, comparing one employer's OSHA history against an industry peer group is more meaningful than looking at raw counts. An employer with 12 inspections in 5 years sounds high, but if the industry average for similar-sized employers is 8 inspections in the same period, the relative position is what matters. The tool itself does not calculate peer comparisons; users do this externally by pulling the relevant industry slice and comparing distributions of citations, penalties and severity.

Several commercial vendors process the public OSHA data into more user-friendly formats. ISN, Avetta, Veriforce and similar contractor pre-qualification platforms ingest the OSHA records and present them as part of their compliance scoring. Subcontractors register with these platforms and clients access the consolidated risk profile rather than running individual searches. The underlying data is the same as the free Establishment Search; the value-add is consolidation, comparison and ongoing monitoring.

For employers responding to discovered Establishment Search records, transparency is the right approach. Customers and prospective clients who pull the records will see what is there. Trying to hide or minimize past citations rarely works because the records are public. The better strategy is to acknowledge the history, describe the corrective actions taken, demonstrate sustained improvement in subsequent inspections and combine the OSHA data with current safety program documentation. Most sophisticated buyers respect the candid version more than the polished marketing version.

For workers and prospective employees considering an employer, the Establishment Search is one input in a broader evaluation. A clean record is reassuring; a record with citations is worth investigating but not automatically disqualifying. Look at the severity, the recency, whether the violations were repeat patterns, and whether the employer has demonstrated improvement. Also consider whether the employer operates in inherently high-hazard industries where some level of OSHA enforcement is expected versus a low-hazard industry where any citation is unusual.

For HR professionals and recruiting teams, the Establishment Search supplements traditional employer-research sources like Glassdoor reviews and BLS injury statistics. The OSHA records add an objective layer beneath subjective reviews — a workplace with frequent fall protection citations is documenting a specific hazard pattern regardless of how employees describe it in reviews. The records do not replace other research; they triangulate with it.

For journalists and investigative reporters, the Establishment Search is the foundation of workplace safety reporting. Stories about specific employer failings, industry-wide enforcement trends, post-fatality investigations and government enforcement priorities all begin with the public OSHA data. The records are quotable, citable, time-stamped and tied to specific standards — exactly the documentary characteristics journalists need to verify and support claims in published reporting on workplace safety.