What GCs Check First in a Subcontractor Prequal Package

Updated September 15, 2026

You’ve filled out prequalification packages before. Insurance certificates, a safety questionnaire, a few references, maybe a financial statement. It feels like a formality until one comes back marked “does not qualify” and nobody explains which part failed. Usually it’s one line on one form.

The package, in the order it usually gets read

A general contractor’s prequalification package almost always asks for the same five things, in roughly this order of how fast each one gets checked.

• Insurance certificates. Proof of general liability, workers’ compensation, and auto coverage, at the limits the GC requires.
• Safety record. Your workers’ comp EMR (experience modification rate), your OSHA 300 logs (the injury and illness record every employer with 11 or more employees keeps), and your TRIR (total recordable incident rate, the number of recordable injuries per 100 workers per year, calculated from those same logs).
• Bonding capacity. The single and aggregate bonding limits your surety, the company that issues your performance and payment bonds, has approved you for.
• References. Recent jobs of similar size and scope, usually with a contact who will actually answer the phone.
• Financials. A statement, sometimes reviewed or audited, showing you can carry a job of this size without a subcontractor default.

A general contractor evaluating a stack of these for one job is not reading every page of every package closely. They’re looking for the one thing that disqualifies you fastest, so they can get to the packages that don’t.

Why the mod is the one that gets screened first

Every other item on that list takes judgment to evaluate. References require a phone call. Financials require someone who can read a balance sheet. Safety programs require reading a narrative and deciding if it sounds real.

Your EMR takes none of that. It’s a single number on a single line, and it either clears the GC’s line or it doesn’t. That makes it the cheapest item on the package to screen, and the cheapest thing to screen is usually the first thing a reviewer, or the software doing the first pass, checks. If your mod is at or above 1.0, the rest of the package may never get read.

This isn’t a comment on whether it’s fair. It’s a comment on how the process actually works: a fast, objective cutoff gets applied before the slow, subjective review does. The safety questionnaire and the OSHA logs matter to a reviewer who gets that far. The mod decides who gets that far.

What “safety record” actually means on the form

The safety section of a prequal package usually asks for three numbers, and they measure different things.

Your EMR compares your actual claims and payroll against what’s expected for a contractor your size doing your kind of work, over a three-year rating window. It’s an insurance industry number, calculated by the rating bureau, and it drives your premium as much as it drives prequalification.

Your OSHA 300 logs are your own internal record of every recordable injury or illness, the ones serious enough to require medical treatment beyond first aid, days away from work, or job restriction. You keep these yourself; nobody audits them the way a bureau audits your mod.

Your TRIR is a rate calculated from those same logs, expressed as recordable injuries per 100 full-time workers per year, which normalizes for company size so a five-person crew and a fifty-person crew can be compared on the same scale.

A GC can ask for all three because they measure different things. A clean TRIR doesn’t offset a bad mod on the form, and a good mod doesn’t excuse a rising TRIR either. Reviewers who dig past the first screen tend to look at whether the three numbers tell a consistent story.

When the rest of the package actually matters

If your numbers clear the GC’s thresholds, the rest of the package is where you compete against other qualified subs. References that confirm you finished similar work on time. Financials that show you can carry the job without being the reason for a delay. A safety narrative that reads like it was written by someone who runs the program, not someone filling out a form.

None of that gets read if the mod alone takes you off the list first. That’s the part worth fixing before the rest of the package matters at all.

How often this gets checked again

A prequalification package usually isn’t a one-time filing. Most GCs ask you to refresh it annually, or before each new job over a certain size, which means a mod problem you don’t fix doesn’t cost you one bid. It costs you every package you submit until the number changes. That’s worth knowing before you decide whether checking your worksheet is worth the effort: the same error, left uncorrected, gets rediscovered and reapplied against you every time you refile.

It also means the reverse is true. A correction that clears your worksheet doesn’t just help the bid in front of you. It helps every package you submit for as long as the corrected rating stays current, which is part of why fixing the underlying number is worth more than explaining around it on a single job.

What this means for you

If you know a bid is coming and your mod is close to or above the line, don’t wait for the prequal software to tell you what you already suspect. Get your current experience rating worksheet (the bureau’s document showing the calculation) and your loss runs (the carrier’s list of your claims and their current values), and check them against each other before you submit the package, not after it comes back rejected.

The free EMR Cost & Bid Check calculator shows what your mod is costing you against common thresholds in about a minute. A full verification compares your worksheet against your actual loss runs and payroll and tells you exactly what to send your agent or carrier if something’s wrong. It’s a flat fee, no contingency, and the savings are yours. Get on the waitlist to be first in line.