Abstract: Background: Incident recurrence following prior investigation and corrective action represents a preventable and persistent failure in construction occupational safety management, suggesting systemic deficiencies in corrective action quality and organizational learning. Methods: This study presents a secondary analysis of four publicly available federal datasets: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Enforcement Database (2018 to 2023), OSHA Injury Tracking Application (ITA) (2018 to 2022), Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) (2018 to 2022), and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) reports (2018 to 2022), to characterize the scope and root cause determinants of incident recurrence in U.S. construction. Results: OSHA enforcement data document a 29.9% increase in construction repeat citations between 2018 and 2023. BLS CFOI analysis identifies five fatal event categories that appeared in the top five causes of construction fatalities every year from 2018 to 2022. OSHA ITA data reveal structural steel contractors exhibited the highest same-category recurrence rate (41.7%). Directed content analysis of 117 NIOSH FACE reports identifies absence of fall protection (68.4%), inadequate hazard communication (61.2%), and insufficient supervisory oversight (57.9%) as the most recurring causal categories, with 43.6% of reports documenting recurrence of a previously investigated incident type. Conclusion: The findings provide government-validated evidence for standardizing systemic corrective action governance in construction safety management.

Keywords: Root cause analysis, incident recurrence, construction safety, OSHA enforcement, repeat citations, corrective action quality, NIOSH FACE, BLS CFOI, fatality prevention, organizational learning.

Downloads: | DOI: 10.17148/IARJSET.2025.121047