Introduction Civil construction is responsible for most occupational accidents, generating social and economic losses and causing serious damage to workers’ health.

Objective To characterize the cases of serious work accidents (SWA) reported in civil construction in Brazil.

Methodology: This is a descriptive study with a quantitative approach with secondary data in the public domain extracted from SWA records from Notifiable Diseases Information System occurred in 2019. Population data were obtained from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey, from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The incidence coefficient was calculated and presented by 100 thousand workers.

Results 10,551 cases of SWA were reported in civil construction in 2019, most of them concentrated in the Southeast (33.14%) and South (22.72%) regions of the country. The occupations with the highest number of registered cases were bricklayers (70.10%), installation electricians (12.10%) and carpenters (10.56%). Most of the injured workers were male (99.02%), black (57.35%), aged between 30–59 years (73.19%) and with incomplete elementary education (31.75%). Accidents were mainly caused by contact with other and unspecified machinery (8.81%), fall on and from scaffolding (6.81%) and fall from, out of or through building or structure (5, 94%). The most affected part of the body was the hands (27.28%) and most cases evolved with some type of disability (61.73%). Fatal accidents stand for 3.07%. The incidence coefficient was 154.64 cases/100 thousand workers.

Conclusion SWA were concentrated in the most productive regions of the country and occur mainly in adult workers, blacks and with low education. In addition, it assumes that the causes of accidents were mainly related to the work environment and the use of individual and collective protective equipment. Thus, measures for the prevention and promotion of workers’ health are recommended to minimize the occurrence of work accidents.