Does anyone have a current IFR/AFR for the UK construction industry - general rather than one particular company/group? I am working on an assignment with four sites and 3 contractors and the Board want a comparative rate to compare the contractors with. Ideally incidents per 100,000 hrs - the HSE figures only count RIDDORs! Any help would be appreciated!

RG63: Unfortunately I don't think you will find what you're looking for - for the simple reason that every business defines and records its 'incidents' by differing standards. RIDDOR is the only nationally-accepted standard, and even here the figures are so widely open to abuse (due to under-reporting) that any comparisons made are going to be open to interpretation and challenge. Even those firms which try to implement the OSHA standard to classify 'medical treatment' and 'lost-time' cases rarely use the exact same criteria for analysing their stats, so figures are rarely if ever going to be directly comparable. In a previous employment, I tried to start a detailed H&S benchmarking exercise (an open, honest sharing of H&S data) with six or seven organisation in the same business sector. After several detailed and acrimonious meetings, over the course of a year or so I eventually gave up - all the businesses were adamant that they collected the data they needed in the way they needed it - and they were unwilling to develop or adopt a common set of standards. The HSE tried to establish a 'how am I doing' audit comparator some time ago (others may be able to post the link) - but it seemed to fall into disuse because many people did not trust the 'self audit' results that were entered by other businesses. The only way I know of allowing comparison is for several organisations to have externally-verified audit to the same scope and methodology - and for all audit reports to be compiled into a comparison report. Unfortunately, this takes a huge amount of trust between businesses which (in todays economic climate) is unlikely to be achieved. So, sorry, I think you may be looking for the holy grail. Steve