How to Fill Out OSHA Form 301: A Contractor's Guide to the Injury and Illness Incident Report

When someone gets hurt on your job site, the first hours are about the worker. But a recordkeeping clock starts too, and for most contractors the document at the center of it is OSHA Form 301, the Injury and Illness Incident Report.

Here's what it is, when it's due, and how to fill it out so it holds up later.

How Form 301 fits with Forms 300 and 300A

OSHA recordkeeping uses three forms that work together:

• Form 300 is the running log of every recordable injury and illness for the year.
• Form 301 is the detailed report for one case: what happened, to whom, when and how.
• Form 300A is the annual summary you post at the workplace each year.

Every case on your 300 log has a matching 301 with the full story.

Who has to keep these records

Most employers with more than 10 employees at any point in the previous year must keep OSHA injury records, and construction is not one of the industries exempted for being low-hazard. Smaller employers are generally partially exempt from routine recordkeeping, but every employer must still report severe injuries. If you're unsure whether you're covered, check OSHA's recordkeeping rule (29 CFR Part 1904) or ask your safety consultant.

The deadlines that matter

• 8 hours: report a work-related fatality to OSHA.
• 24 hours: report an inpatient hospitalization, amputation or loss of an eye.
• 7 calendar days: complete Form 301 (or an equivalent form) and enter the case on your 300 log after you learn a recordable injury or illness happened.
• 5 years: keep the 301 on file after the end of the calendar year it covers.
• Once a year, by March 2: establishments with 100 or more employees in designated high-hazard industries, which include construction, must electronically submit the information from their Forms 300 and 301 to OSHA.

Filling it out, section by section

About the employee. Name, address, date of birth, date hired and gender.

About the health care provider. Who treated the worker and where, whether they were treated in an emergency room, and whether they were hospitalized overnight as an inpatient.

About the case. This is the part that matters most:

• The case number from your 300 log
• Date of the injury
• Time the employee began work that day
• Time of the event
• What the employee was doing just before the incident
• What happened
• What the injury or illness was
• What object or substance directly harmed the employee

Write the narrative like an investigator, not a summary

The most common weakness on a 301 is a vague description. "Slipped and fell" or "hurt back" tells nobody anything. Write what happened in plain, specific facts:

"Employee was carrying 2x10 joists across the second-floor deck. He stepped on an unsecured plywood sheet covering a floor opening; the sheet shifted and he fell about nine feet to the slab below, fracturing his left wrist."

That level of detail protects you in a workers' comp claim, in an OSHA inspection and in any lawsuit that follows.

Where contractors' facts fall apart

The narrative is usually written days later from memory, and the details around it are where reports get shaky:

• "Time employee began work" gets guessed, or copied from the schedule instead of what actually happened.
• Who else was on site is reconstructed from a foreman's recollection.
• Whether the worker's required certifications were current that day often isn't known at all.

Those gaps rarely matter until a claim is disputed, and then they matter a lot.

How verified check-in data helps

If your crew checks in with GPS-verified, time-stamped records, the hardest facts on the 301 are already on file. In CrewVerify, logging an incident pulls the worker's verified arrival time, confirmation they were inside the site boundary, hours on site and who else was checked in at that moment. It locks that snapshot to the report so it can't drift later.

You still decide whether a case is recordable and you still write the narrative. The facts underneath it just aren't guesses anymore. OSHA allows an equivalent form in place of the official 301, as long as it captures all the same information.

This is general information, not legal advice. For your specific obligations, see OSHA's recordkeeping requirements at osha.gov or consult a safety professional. CrewVerify auto-fills incident reports from verified check-in data. Start a free trial.