Construction safety inspection AI, from a job-site photo

OSHA's construction safety enforcement is organized around four hazard categories — falls, struck-by, caught-in/between, and electrocution — collectively known as the Focus Four because they account for the majority of construction fatalities each year. Falls alone represent over a third of all construction deaths annually, driven primarily by unprotected edges and openings, inadequate or missing fall protection systems, and unsafe ladder use. The Focus Four are not only the most lethal hazards; they are also the most frequently cited in 29 CFR 1926 inspections, which means an AI construction safety inspection that checks for visible fall, struck-by, electrocution, and caught-in exposures directly addresses the categories with the highest enforcement and liability exposure.

OSHA's construction standards (29 CFR 1926) apply across all construction, alteration, and repair work, including demolition, excavation, and renovation. Unlike general industry's 1910 standards, construction standards frequently specify a 'competent person' — someone who is capable of identifying existing and predictable hazards and who has authority to take prompt corrective action. The competent person requirement appears in over 100 separate provisions in 1926, covering everything from scaffold inspection to excavation classification to fall protection planning. An AI-assisted photo inspection supports the competent person's work by systematically surfacing visible conditions before and during the inspection walk, but it does not and cannot satisfy the competent person determination itself.

Construction sites are nearly always multi-employer environments, and OSHA's multi-employer citation policy determines which employers can be cited for a hazard — not just the employer whose workers are exposed. Under this policy, OSHA can cite a creating employer (the one who created the hazard), an exposing employer (whose workers face the hazard even if another employer created it), a correcting employer (who has responsibility for correcting a hazard), and a controlling employer (the general contractor or owner who has supervisory authority over the site). General contractors are frequently cited as controlling employers for hazardous conditions created by subcontractors because they had the authority to require compliance.

This multi-employer liability structure means that general contractors have a direct financial interest in running safety inspections that cover all subcontractor work areas, not just their own crews. A documented finding-and-correction record for a subcontractor's work area — showing that the GC identified a hazard and required corrective action — is the clearest available defense against a controlling-employer citation. Photo inspections of sub work areas, with the corrective actions logged and closed, create exactly this record.