Contractor scorecards, and where each number on one comes from
Most of a contractor scorecard is reassembled from records filed elsewhere. TRIR and DART come off the OSHA 300 log using a 200,000-hour base. The experience modification is issued by a rating organization the Insurance Commissioner designates. On federal work the evaluation is a CPARS rating on a five-point scale, with 14 calendar days to respond.
A contractor scorecard looks like a judgment and is mostly an act of reassembly. The numbers on it were generated somewhere else, for some other purpose, by somebody working on something else entirely. A rate comes off an injury log. A modification comes from a rating bureau. A pass rate comes out of an audit system the buyer runs. A schedule number comes off dates already written into the specification.
That matters because each number has its own owner, its own clock, and its own route for getting it changed. A contractor arguing about a grade is usually arguing with the wrong party.
The card is assembled from records filed for other reasons
Four sources produce almost everything on a vegetation contractor's card: the OSHA injury and illness records, the workers' compensation rating organization, the buyer's own quality audit system, and the dates on the contract.
Only one of those is discretionary in the moment. The others are filings with deadlines. The safety numbers are the clearest case:
Establishments that are required to submit under paragraph (a)(1) or (2) of this section must submit all of the required information by March 2 of the year after the calendar year covered by the form(s) (for example, by March 2, 2024, for the forms covering 2023).
That is 29 CFR 1904.41(c). A number submitted to the federal government on March 2 is the number a buyer reads in June, and it is the only version there is.
Two of the three safety numbers come from one log
TRIR and DART are both computed from the OSHA 300 log with the same constant. OSHA stated the formula in a letter of interpretation dated August 23, 2016:
An incidence rate of injuries and illnesses may be computed from the following formula: (Number of injuries and illnesses X 200,000) / Employee hours worked = Incidence rate. The 200,000 figure in the formula represents the number of hours 100 employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year would work, and provides the standard base for calculating incidence rate for an entire year.
TRIR uses every recordable case. DART uses the subset involving days away, restricted work or transfer, which are columns H and I on the log. The denominator is hours worked, so a crew that works more overtime dilutes its own rate.
What counts as a case is decided one incident at a time, under 29 CFR 1904.7(a):
You must consider an injury or illness to meet the general recording criteria, and therefore to be recordable, if it results in any of the following: death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness.
A climber whose laceration is closed with adhesive strips and who goes back up the tree stays off the log. The same laceration closed with sutures goes on it. That single clinical decision, made in an urgent care clinic on a Tuesday, is what moves a rate that a buyer will read as a statement about the crew.
OSHA says the formula punishes a small crew
The formula has a size problem, and the agency that publishes it says so:
A single injury or illness has a much greater effect on incidence rates in small establishments than on larger establishments. Any analysis must take this into account.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. One recordable case in a 12-person crew working 24,000 hours produces a rate of 8.33. The identical case in a company working 400,000 hours produces 0.50. The accident is identical. The denominator is the whole difference.
OSHA's suggested correction is aggregation:
For example, a small establishment can enter three years of injury and illness counts and three years of hours worked into the formula, while retaining the 200,000 constant. This would return an annualized rate for 100 FTE comparable to national rates.
That is the reasoning behind a three-year average on a grading card, and it is worth knowing where the idea came from when a buyer is looking at a single bad year.
The same letter adds that reliance on only one indicator can lead to wrong conclusions, and recommends leading indicators alongside the lagging ones: near misses reported, time taken to respond to those reports, management walkthroughs, training completion, days to corrective action. A contractor with a small denominator has a real argument to make, and it is OSHA's own argument to borrow.
Which filing you owe is decided by a four-digit code
The industry code on an establishment decides which OSHA submission it owes, and two tree companies doing identical work can land in different places.
Appendix A to subpart E covers the annual 300A submission for establishments with 20 to 249 employees. It lists NAICS 5617, Services to Buildings and Dwellings, which contains 561730, Landscaping Services. OSHA's own landscape and horticultural services page maps SIC 0783, Ornamental Shrub and Tree Services, into 561730. Appendix A also lists NAICS 22, Utilities, so the client is on the same list as the crew.
Appendix B is the heavier obligation. An establishment with 100 or more employees in an Appendix B industry submits information from Forms 300 and 301, which is case-level detail rather than a summary. Appendix B does not list 5617. It does list 1133, Logging, and 1153, Support Activities for Forestry.
Establishment | Appendix A | Appendix B | Annual submission |
150 employees, coded 561730 | Yes | No | Form 300A only |
150 employees, coded 115310 | Yes | Yes | Form 300A, plus Forms 300 and 301 |
15 employees, coded 561730 | Yes | No | None under 1904.41(a)(1) or (a)(2) |
The code is a classification decision, not a preference, and it is worth confirming before a buyer's prequalification portal asks for case-level data the company has never had to file.
The third number comes from outside both parties
The experience modification arrives from a third party. California Insurance Code section 11734(a) sets the structure:
Every workers' compensation insurer shall adhere to a uniform experience rating plan filed with the commissioner by a rating organization designated by the commissioner and subject to his or her disapproval.
The designated rating organization in California is the Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau, which administers the classification system and issues the modification. A buyer that sets a threshold of 1.00 is setting it against a plan the commissioner approved.
The route for contesting it is statutory. Insurance Code section 11753.1(a) gives a person aggrieved by a decision of a rating organization the right to request reconsideration, and if that request is rejected or not acted on within 30 days, to appeal.
The 30 days measure the rating organization's silence, and the appeal right opens when they run out. A contractor whose classification changed after an audit and whose modification moved with it has a defined place to take the question, and it runs through the rating organization to the commissioner.
How these three numbers are scored before award, on a platform rather than in a contract, belongs to ISNetworld grades.
The quality number is a target the buyer set for itself
A quality pass rate looks absolute and is relative. It is measured against a figure the buyer wrote down in advance, and the gap between target and actual is the finding.
PacifiCorp's 2025 vegetation management pass rates, as reported in the 2025 Wildfire Mitigation Plan Independent Evaluator Annual Implementation Report, show what that looks like across one program in one year:
Activity | Target pass rate | Actual pass rate |
Routine cycle maintenance (detailed), distribution | 95% | 96% |
Annual corrective work (patrol), distribution | 95% | 97% |
Pole clearing beyond PRC 4292 | 95% | 93% |
Routine maintenance (detailed), transmission | 95% | 94% |
Annual corrective work (patrol), transmission | 95% | 96% |
Three activities cleared the target. Two did not, by two points and by one. A crew reading its own quarterly number as good or bad without knowing which of those rows it sits in is reading half the measurement.
What a shortfall does to the utility is the subject of Energy Safety audits. What an individual failed inspection does to an invoice, and who is allowed to grade it, belongs to who audits whom.
Schedule is a day count with a deduction attached
Timeliness is the easiest metric to verify and the one most often left out of a discussion about performance. Most of the time it is arithmetic against a date printed in the scope.
The City of Berkeley's tree removal and pruning specification 23-11588-C, released November 20, 2023, issues a Tree Removal List of 30 to 60 locations. The contractor begins within 30 calendar days of the issue date and completes within 90. Then:
If the work has not been completed within the required ninety (90) day time period, the City shall deduct a retention fee of ten (10) percent from the amount of the invoice.
One list, one issue date, one number. The specification names a measurement and a penalty in the same sentence, and stops there. A contractor that treats the 90th day as a target rather than a threshold has already agreed to the deduction, and the price side of that same measured unit is covered in unit prices and change orders.
Federal work is graded on a five-point scale
Federal vegetation and right-of-way work generates a formal past performance evaluation in CPARS. FAR 42.1502(a) sets the frequency:
Past performance evaluations shall be prepared at least annually and at the time the work under a contract or order is completed.
Evaluations are required for each contract and each order exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold, which FAR 2.101 currently sets at $350,000. Construction contracts carry their own floor of $900,000, and any construction contract terminated for default is evaluated regardless of value.
FAR 42.1503(b)(2) fixes the minimum factors:
Technical, meaning quality of product or service
Cost control, except on firm-fixed-price arrangements
Schedule and timeliness
Management or business relations
Small business subcontracting
Other, covering items such as terminations, suspension and debarment
Each factor is rated on a five-point scale of exceptional, very good, satisfactory, marginal and unsatisfactory, and each rating carries a supporting narrative.
One sentence in Table 42-1 is worth knowing by heart:
A fundamental principle of assigning ratings is that contractors will not be evaluated with a rating lower than Satisfactory solely for not performing beyond the requirements of the contract/order.
Meeting the contract is a Satisfactory. The table also constrains the other direction. A Marginal rating should be supported by referencing the management tool that notified the contractor of the deficiency, such as a quality or safety deficiency report or letter, so a Marginal rating with no letter behind it is a rating the table did not contemplate.
The clock is short. Under FAR 42.1503(d) the contractor has up to 14 calendar days from notification to submit comments, rebutting statements or additional information, and the agency must provide review at a level above the contracting officer. The evaluation reaches source selection officials no later than 14 days after that notification either way. Agencies use the information for three years after completion of performance, and six years on construction and architect-engineer contracts.
Paying a sub late lands on the prime's card
Small business subcontracting is a mandatory CPARS factor, and one of its criteria is about money moving rather than work performed. Table 42-2 conditions both of the top two ratings on this:
Did not have a history of three or more unjustified reduced or untimely payments to small business subcontractors within a 12-month period.
Three late payments inside a year, without justification, puts an Exceptional and a Very Good out of reach on that factor. The Unsatisfactory definition names the same history from the other side.
For a prime running tree crews under subcontract, this is the point where an accounts payable practice becomes a performance record that follows the company to the next solicitation. The payment clock a California public works subcontract runs on is covered in flow-down clauses, and the participation program a California utility runs is covered in DBE participation.
A state agency's post-evaluation runs on its own clock
California has a statutory post-award evaluation, and its reach is narrow. Public Contract Code section 10369(a) applies to state agencies and to consulting services contracts of $5,000 or more. Its schedule is precise:
Step | Deadline |
Post-evaluation prepared | Within 60 days of completion of the contract |
Unsatisfactory evaluation sent to the department | Within five working days of completion of the evaluation |
Contractor notified and sent a copy | Within 15 days of filing |
Contractor's written response statement | Within 30 days after receipt |
Evaluation retained by the agency | 36 months following contract completion |
The response statement is filed with the evaluation, which means a disputed finding travels with the contractor's answer attached rather than being deleted.
Most vegetation work is not a consulting services contract, so section 10369 will not reach it, and a city or county is outside the section entirely. What a local agency does instead is whatever its solicitation says. Berkeley's asks a bidder to describe any contract terminated in the last five years, defines termination for default, and reserves the outcome:
The City will evaluate the facts and may, at its sole discretion, reject the proposal on the grounds of the past experience.
No statute sets that five-year window or that standard of review. The document does, and the document is the only place to find it.
Nothing obliges a utility to show a contractor its card
An investor-owned utility's internal supplier scorecard is a commercial document. It sits outside the filing, publication and disclosure schedule that governs a federal evaluation or a state post-evaluation. Showing the weighting behind a grade is voluntary on the utility's part.
What is public is the upstream material the grade is built from: the wildfire mitigation plan and its quarterly data, the independent evaluator's annual report, and the state's audit findings. A contractor can read the target its own work is measured against without ever seeing the scorecard.
Where that leaves a disputed grade depends entirely on the agreement. The suspension, cure and termination provisions in the master agreement are the operative instrument, and they are covered in how a utility MSA is structured. The prequalification grade is a separate instrument again, with its own owner and its own remedy, covered in ISNetworld grades and in what prequalification evaluators check.
Where this lands on a contract
Before signing, five things on the scorecard are worth pinning to a document rather than an understanding:
Which statistics, over which window. A three-year average and a single prior year are different tests, and OSHA's own guidance supports the longer window for a small establishment.
The industry code on the prequalification file. It decides which OSHA submission the company owes, and a code that matches the work keeps a data request answerable.
The quality target, stated as a number. A pass rate means something only against the figure it is read against, and that figure usually exists in the buyer's program documents before it appears on an invoice.
The schedule deduction. If a specification attaches a percentage to a day count, that is a performance metric with money on it, and it operates on its own.
The route for contesting each number. Fourteen calendar days in CPARS, 30 days after receipt on a state post-evaluation, reconsideration and appeal on an experience modification, and whatever the master agreement provides for everything else.
Each of those has a different owner. The one thing they share is that none of them is settled by the crew that did the work.
Further reading
ISNetworld grades and what an A actually means: The prequalification grade that uses these same statistics before the work starts.
What prequalification evaluators actually check: The scored questionnaire a public agency runs before award, and what it does not reach.
Energy Safety audits and what they reach: What happens to a utility when its quality control pass rate lands below its own commitment.
Frequently asked questions
How is TRIR actually calculated, and who decides what counts?
The formula is the number of recordable injuries and illnesses multiplied by 200,000, divided by employee hours worked. OSHA's August 23, 2016 letter of interpretation states that the 200,000 figure represents the hours 100 employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year would work. What counts as recordable is decided by 29 CFR 1904.7(a): death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, or loss of consciousness. The employer records it, and the recording decision is the one that moves the rate.
Does a small tree crew get a worse rate than a large one for the same accident?
Yes, and OSHA says so in writing. The same 2016 letter states that a single injury or illness has a much greater effect on incidence rates in small establishments than on larger establishments, and that any analysis must take this into account. One recordable case in a 12-person crew working 24,000 hours produces a rate of 8.33. The identical case in a company working 400,000 hours produces 0.50. OSHA's suggested remedy is to enter three years of counts and three years of hours into the same formula, which is what a three-year average on a scorecard is doing.
Who calculates the experience modification, and can it be challenged?
Not the employer and not the buyer. California Insurance Code section 11734(a) requires every workers' compensation insurer to adhere to a uniform experience rating plan filed with the commissioner by a rating organization designated by the commissioner. In California that organization is the Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau. Insurance Code section 11753.1(a) gives a person aggrieved by a decision of a rating organization the right to request reconsideration, and if the request is rejected or not acted on within 30 days, to appeal.
Does a federal past performance rating expire?
It stops being usable rather than disappearing. FAR 42.1503(g) directs agencies to use past performance information in CPARS that is within three years of the completion of performance, and six years for construction and architect-engineer contracts. FAR 42.1503(d) gives the contractor up to 14 calendar days from notification to submit comments, rebutting statements or additional information, and requires the agency to provide for review at a level above the contracting officer. The ultimate conclusion is still a decision of the contracting agency.
Can a city refuse a bid because of a termination on an old contract?
It can if the solicitation says so. The City of Berkeley's tree removal and pruning specification 23-11588-C asks a bidder to describe any contract terminated in the last five years, defines termination for default, and states that the City will evaluate the facts and may at its sole discretion reject the proposal on the grounds of past experience. No statute sets that five-year window. The solicitation does, which means the window and the consequence both have to be read out of the document in front of you.
