The most cited OSHA construction standards, fiscal year 2025

Use the findings in a briefing or article

This is Cirqify’s analysis of federal enforcement records, not OSHA’s all-industry Top 10 or a ranking of workplace injury risk. Keep the fiscal year, construction scope and federal/state distinction with any figures you cite.

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Suggested citation

Cirqify. OSHA construction citations by standard and state, FY 2025. Analysis of U.S. Department of Labor OSHA Inspection and Violation datasets, retrieved October 20, 2026. cirqify.com/osha/most-cited-construction-standards.

Link to this page so readers can check the method and limitations. The source data remains subject to its source terms; this page does not assign a new license to DOL material. For permission to republish the original chart or substantial editorial content, contact Cirqify.

For a practical follow-up to the statistics, use the free construction safety notice template and filled notice-and-reply example.

Fall protection citations by state

Federal OSHA issued 9,614 fall protection citations (29 CFR 1926.500–503) in construction in FY 2025. Among states where federal OSHA covers private construction, the most were in Illinois (1,214), Florida (1,087), Texas (973), Ohio (756), and Wisconsin (748). Fall protection was the most cited construction standard in 39 of the 50 states and territories whose citations mostly use 29 CFR 1926.

State-plan inspectors issued another 3,929 fall protection citations under 1926 codes. States that cite their own standards, such as California and Washington, record fall protection under state codes, so their counts below are not comparable.

FY 2026 so far: preliminary and incomplete

FY 2026 ended on September 30, 2026, but its data is not complete yet. As of October 16, 2026, the dataset held 14,686 federal 1926 construction citations for FY 2026, against 23,660 for FY 2025. Two gaps explain much of the difference. Federal citations issued in October and November 2025 (298 and 524) were far below the same months a year earlier (1,799 and 1,699), which coincides with the federal government shutdown from October 1 to November 12, 2025; state-plan citations did not drop. September 2026 shows only 373 federal citations against 2,501 a year earlier, a sign that recent citations had not been loaded yet.

The ranking is already stable at the top. In FY 2026 so far the five most cited federal construction standards are 1926.501, 1926.451, 1926.1053, 1926.503, and 1926.102, the same order as the construction standards in OSHA’s own preliminary FY 2026 Top 10, which covers all industries through August 31, 2026. Scaffolds (1926.451) moved from fourth to second. We will update this page when FY 2026 is complete.

Method

• Source. U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA enforcement data: Inspection and Violation datasets, from the DOL Open Data Portal (Inspection, Violation). Complete-dataset downloads retrieved October 20, 2026; records loaded through October 16, 2026.
• Period. Federal fiscal year 2025: citations with an issuance date from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025, whenever the inspection opened.
• Construction. Inspections whose establishment NAICS code starts with 23 (construction). 1926 citations to employers in other industries are not counted.
• What counts as a citation. Each violation item, counting grouped items (such as 1a and 1b) separately, classified serious, willful, repeat or other-than-serious. Deleted items are excluded. Items later reduced, reclassified or vacated after a contest or settlement are counted as they currently appear.
• Standard. The cited standard code, such as 19260501 B13, read as section 1926.501 and paragraph 1926.501(b)(13). Paragraphs are ranked at the (letter)(number) level.
• Federal vs. state plan. By the inspecting office’s reporting ID; state-plan offices are identified by a 5 in the third digit. We checked this against the site states each office inspects. The national rankings use federal OSHA inspections only, the same scope as OSHA’s Top 10.
• State. The state of the inspected site.
• Fall protection. 29 CFR 1926 Subpart M, sections 1926.500 to 1926.503. Scaffold (Subpart L), ladder (Subpart X) and steel erection (Subpart R) fall rules are counted under their own sections.
• Checks. We recomputed the national total, several section and paragraph counts, and four state figures with a separate SQL query over the raw files; all matched. The FY 2026 order of the top construction standards also matches OSHA’s own preliminary list.

Limits

• State plans cite their own rules. Cal/OSHA, Washington L&I, MIOSHA and Oregon OSHA, among others, cite state standards. Their citations appear in the state totals but mostly not under 1926 sections, so state-plan states cannot be ranked against federal states by 1926 standard.
• Federal and state inspections differ. Inspection targeting, staffing and citation practices vary between federal area offices and state plans and between years, so citation counts reflect enforcement activity as much as site conditions.
• Public-sector plans. In Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, the state plan covers public employers and federal OSHA inspects private construction. Both appear in the state totals.
• Counts change. Contests and settlements can delete or reclassify items after we retrieved the data, and recent citations are loaded with a delay.
• Citations, not hazards. A citation is OSHA’s allegation at the time it was issued, not a final finding, and the count says nothing about how often a hazard occurs on uninspected sites.

Common questions

Using this data

Download the aggregated JSON or the state table as CSV. Please cite as: Cirqify, “The most cited OSHA construction standards, fiscal year 2025,” October 20, 2026, https://cirqify.com/osha/most-cited-construction-standards, based on U.S. Department of Labor OSHA enforcement data retrieved October 20, 2026.

For what each standard requires and how to check it on site, see the OSHA construction standards guides. For how state rules differ, see the state plan comparisons.