Key Takeaways
- The first day back after a holiday shutdown deserves the same planning as the last day before it. A site walk, equipment checks, and a short re-orientation can catch shifted guardrails and frozen lines before crews start work.
- Wind chill shortens how long crews can safely stay exposed. At 0°F with a 20 mph wind, the wind chill drops to -22°F, and exposed skin can freeze in about 30 minutes.
- January is National Radon Action Month, a reminder to check ventilation in enclosed and below-grade work and to consider radon-resistant building practices.
- January also kicks off recordkeeping season for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Covered employers post their Form 300A summary from February 1 through April 30, and construction establishments with 20 or more employees must submit it electronically by March 2.
- Last year’s injury data is most useful when it shapes this year’s goals. Comparing your recordable rate to the construction average and restarting near-miss reporting can give crews a measurable target for the year.
Start the New Year With Safety
The first Monday back after the holiday break rarely starts at full speed. The trailer is cold, and half the crew is still shaking off two weeks away from the work. Conditions on site may have changed while everyone was gone, and deep winter hazards like wind chill and frozen ground are usually waiting, too. These January safety topics focus on getting the site and the crew back up to speed, then using last year’s data to set measurable goals for the new one.
Each section below includes talking points for toolbox talks and morning huddles, plus related talks from our toolbox talk library.
Restarting the Site After the Holiday Shutdown
A jobsite that sat empty for a week or two can look the same from the gate and still be a different place underfoot. Wind can shift guardrails and hole covers while snow buries the openings underneath. Equipment that sat idle in the cold may also behave differently than it did in December.
If your team completed a pre-shutdown checklist in December, the restart is a chance to run it again in reverse and note anything that changed. Our December safety topics guide includes that checklist.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s construction standards already require these inspections. The general safety standard, 29 CFR 1926.20, requires frequent and regular inspections of jobsites, materials, and equipment by competent persons.
Scaffolds need a competent person’s inspection before each shift and after anything that could affect their structural integrity, under 29 CFR 1926.451. Excavations need a fresh inspection after storms and other events that increase the hazard. A long break in deep winter can trigger all three.
Walk the site before the first crews start work, with a focus on what tends to change during a break:
- Fall protection: guardrails, hole covers, and scaffold planks that wind or snow might have moved
- Water and ice: burst or frozen lines, ice on stairs and decking, and standing water near temporary power
- Temporary power: cords and panels that sat in snow or water, plus a test of ground-fault protection before anyone plugs in
- Excavations: walls that froze and thawed while nobody was watching
- Equipment: batteries, hydraulics, and safety devices on machines that sat idle in the cold
- Fire protection: heaters, sprinkler systems, and extinguishers back in service
The crew needs a restart, too. A short huddle on the first morning can cover what changed on site, who’s new to the project, and what work is coming up in the next two weeks. Use that same huddle to confirm everyone is fit for duty after the holidays. A few minutes of stretching before physical work in the cold can help prevent strains after two weeks off the tools, and it’s worth reminding crews that anyone can stop work if they spot a hazard.
If an incident happens in the first days back, a documented restart walk and huddle can show that a competent person checked the site before work resumed.
Toolbox talks for this topic: Good Housekeeping · Near Miss Reporting
Deep Cold and Wind Chill
Once the air drops near zero, wind becomes the variable that decides how long a crew can safely stay exposed. The National Weather Service uses wind chill to describe how cold it actually feels on exposed skin. A 20°F day with a 20 mph wind feels like 4°F. At 0°F with the same wind, the wind chill drops to -22°F, and the National Weather Service warns that exposed skin can freeze in about 30 minutes.
That makes the forecast a planning tool. When the Weather Service issues a cold weather advisory or an extreme cold warning for your area, consider shortening exposure for the most exposed tasks, adding warm-up breaks, and moving work into enclosed areas where you can. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s cold stress guidance also recommends pairing workers so they can watch each other for frostbite and hypothermia.
Deep cold also affects routine tasks. A few points worth raising in a January huddle:
- Ladders and access: frozen rungs get slick, and heavy gloves make it harder to keep a firm grip and three points of contact.
- Tools and equipment: cordless tool batteries can lose power fast in the cold, and stiff hands don’t grip a tool as well as warm ones.
- Lifting in layers: bulky clothing limits movement and can hide how hard a body is working, so warm up before heavy lifting and get help with awkward loads.
- Eyes and face: wind, cold, and glare off snow can make it harder to see hazards, so keep safety glasses or goggles on.
Toolbox talks for this topic: Cold Stress · PPE in Construction
National Radon Action Month
January is National Radon Action Month, and radon is easy to overlook on a jobsite because crews can’t see or smell it. Radon is a colorless, odorless radioactive gas that rises from the soil and can seep into buildings through cracks and openings in the foundation. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that radon causes about 21,000 lung cancer deaths in the U.S. each year, which makes it the leading cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers.
Radon touches a contractor’s work in two ways. Crews spending long stretches in enclosed, below-grade spaces with little ventilation, such as basements, tunnels, and utility vaults, may face higher exposure in areas where radon levels run high. Contractors also have a chance to keep radon out of the buildings they deliver.
The EPA’s radon-resistant construction techniques include a gas-permeable layer beneath the slab, sealed foundation openings, and a vent pipe that carries radon up and out of the building. Adding them during foundation work tends to cost far less than fixing a radon problem after the building is finished.
The EPA recommends fixing a building when indoor radon levels reach 4 picocuries per liter or higher.
A quick January talk can cover where radon tends to collect on your projects and why ventilation matters in below-grade work. Crews can also check the EPA’s map of radon zones to see whether a project sits in a county with high radon potential.
The January Compliance Checklist
January is when last year’s injury and illness records turn into this year’s paperwork. OSHA’s recordkeeping rule, 29 CFR Part 1904, sets three dates most construction employers need on the calendar:
| When | What to do | Who it applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Before February 1 | Review the OSHA 300 log for accuracy, total it on the Form 300A summary, and have a company executive certify the summary | Employers required to keep OSHA injury and illness records |
| February 1 to April 30 | Post the signed Form 300A where employee notices usually go, even if there were no recordable cases | Employers required to keep OSHA injury and illness records |
| By March 2, 2027 | Submit Form 300A data through OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application | Establishments with 20 to 249 employees in designated high-hazard industries, which include construction, plus establishments with 250 or more employees. Establishments with 100 or more employees in certain industries listed in the rule’s Appendix B also submit Forms 300 and 301 |
The electronic submission and the wall posting are separate requirements, so filing online doesn’t replace posting the summary on site. Employers in states with their own OSHA-approved programs should confirm their state’s rules, since some add requirements of their own.
Penalties are worth a look this month, too. OSHA normally adjusts its maximum civil penalties for inflation each January, but the agency skipped the 2026 adjustment, leaving the maximums at $16,550 for a serious violation and $165,514 for a willful or repeated one. Check OSHA’s site for the 2027 figures once the agency publishes them.
Recordkeeping citations tend to be technical, and they’re also among the easiest to avoid. Accurate logs serve a second purpose as well. If an incident ends up in a claim or a lawsuit, logs your team kept carefully and on time can show the company tracked and reported injuries the way the rule requires.
Reviewing Last Year and Setting Goals
The totals on the Form 300A make a natural starting point for setting this year’s safety goals. Here are a few things to start your review and determine a safe path forward.
Calculate Your TRIR
The Total Recordable Incident Rate, or TRIR, is one of the most common ways to compare your results with the rest of the industry. It shows how many recordable injuries and illnesses happened for every 100 full-time workers over a year.
TRIR = (recordable cases × 200,000) ÷ total hours worked
The 200,000 figure represents 100 full-time workers putting in 40 hours a week for 50 weeks. A contractor with 6 recordable cases across 480,000 hours worked would land at a TRIR of 2.5. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a rate of 2.2 across private-sector construction in 2024.
Add Leading Indicators
TRIR looks backward. Leading indicators track activity before an injury happens, which makes them more useful for steering the year ahead. A few that tend to work well on construction projects:
- Near-miss reports: how often crews flag close calls before they turn into injuries
- Pre-Task Plan quality: whether plans name specific hazards and controls for the work at hand
- Corrective action closure time: how quickly identified hazards actually get fixed
Our guide to the top safety KPIs to track every year walks through how to pick metrics that fit your projects.
Restart Near-Miss Reporting
Crews tend to underreport near misses, often because they worry about blame or don’t think a close call counts. January is a good time to reset that expectation and make it clear that every report helps fix a hazard before it hurts someone.
A participation goal can be easier to rally a crew around than a target recordable rate. Something like “double near-miss reports by spring” gives everyone a way to contribute, and more reported near misses can help lower the recordable rate over time.
Toolbox talks for this topic: Near Miss Reporting · Injury Reporting
Start the Year With Better Visibility
The goals you set in January only matter if you can see progress toward them in February, May, and September. Tracking that progress depends on field data crews can record quickly.
Here’s what that looks like in practice, using Safety Mojo as an example:
- Documenting the restart walk. Conversational Forms lets a foreman or superintendent fill out inspections and observations by voice. That makes it easier to record what the restart walk turned up while standing on the deck, so the company has a dated record of the site’s condition if an incident or claim comes up later.
- Turning Pre-Task Plans into a leading indicator. Flex PTP is Safety Mojo’s digital Pre-Task Plan tool. It scores the quality of submitted PTPs and permit requests, so a safety manager can see which crews are planning carefully and which might need support. A PTP for exterior work that lists “cold” without naming warm-up breaks or a plan for wind chill might score lower, flagging it before the shift starts. Tracked over months, those scores can show whether planning quality is improving across the project.
- Keeping open items in view. My Day Dashboard gives safety leaders a real-time view of open items across their projects, including corrective actions. Reviewing it weekly can show whether corrective actions are closing on schedule, one of the leading indicators above.
If you’re planning your safety goals for the year and want to see how this works on your projects, book a demo.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most important January safety topics for construction? Key January topics for construction crews include restarting the site after the holiday shutdown, deep cold and wind chill, radon exposure in enclosed and below-grade work, OSHA recordkeeping deadlines, and reviewing last year’s safety data to set goals.
What safety observances are in January? January is National Radon Action Month. It’s also the start of OSHA’s recordkeeping season, with the Form 300A posting period beginning February 1.
When does the OSHA Form 300A need to be posted? Covered employers must post the signed Form 300A from February 1 through April 30, even if they had no recordable injuries or illnesses during the year.
When is the OSHA electronic injury reporting deadline? Covered establishments must submit their Form 300A data through OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application by March 2. That includes establishments with 20 to 249 employees in designated high-hazard industries, such as construction, and establishments with 250 or more employees.
How do you calculate TRIR? Multiply the number of OSHA-recordable injuries and illnesses by 200,000, then divide by the total hours worked by all employees during the year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a rate of 2.2 for private-sector construction in 2024.
How cold is too cold to work outside? OSHA doesn’t set a single temperature limit, so wind chill and exposure time are the better guides. At 0°F with a 20 mph wind, the National Weather Service says exposed skin can freeze in about 30 minutes, which calls for shorter exposure, warm-up breaks, and workers watching each other for signs of frostbite.
