The OSHA Establishment Search is the free public database at osha.gov/ords/imis/establishment.html for looking up federal OSHA inspection records of U.S. workplaces, searchable back to 1972. Enter an establishment name and state, then open any inspection to see its citations, penalties and case status.

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 searchable back to 1972. Search by establishment name, state, OSHA office, zip code, case status, violation status or inspection date range, and the results list the inspections OSHA has recorded at matching establishments, with dates, citations issued and penalty amounts.

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.

Go to osha.gov/ords/imis/establishment.html. The search form has fields for establishment name, state, OSHA office, site zip code, case status (all, closed or open), violation status (with or without violations) and an inspection date range. Fill in the fields you know, typically the establishment name and state, and submit. Results list matching inspections, and each inspection number opens its detail page.

OSHA warns on the page that different companies may have similar names, so verify the address before drawing conclusions. Larger employers may be recorded under a slightly different legal name than the brand customers know, so try name variations if the first result is incomplete.

Searching by state and date range without a name returns inspections across that area and period, which is useful for area-wide analysis or for following post-accident enforcement. Filtering by case status shows only open or only closed cases, and filtering by violation status separates inspections that produced violations from those that did not.

OSHA Establishment Search reference facts

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. OSHA lists maximum penalties of $16,550 per Serious violation and $165,514 per Willful or Repeat violation (osha.gov/penalties, adjusted annually for inflation).

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, inpatient hospitalizations, eye losses). The Fatality and Catastrophe Investigations database covers worker deaths and severe incidents. The Injury Tracking Application (ITA) collects 300A summary data from covered establishments: those with 250 or more employees, and those with 20 to 249 employees in designated industries (establishments with 19 or fewer employees are exempt).

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 large-scale or repeated searches, OSHA inspection data is also published for bulk download through the U.S. Department of Labor data portal (enforcedata.dol.gov, now redirecting to data.dol.gov), suitable for analysis in Excel, R or Python. Check the portal for current file formats and refresh schedules.

Privacy and accuracy considerations matter. The records are public, but using them to make adverse decisions about individuals raises Fair Credit Reporting Act considerations in some contexts. Always verify the establishment name and address carefully, because a name match alone does not prove identity and similarly named businesses can produce false positives.

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.