As the construction industry continues to capitalize on IoT technology to combat job site safety risks, wearable devices are becoming instrumental in improving risk identification and response to incidents. Gilbane Building Co., Travelers Insurance, and Triax Technologies have partnered to explore how wearable devices can elevate work and site safety, while quantifying and mitigating risks through Triax’s Spot-r platform.
According to an article in BuiltWorlds, the Spot-r platform monitors workers and equipment via wearable devices, or tagged equipment and machinery. The wearable can detect when a worker falls, and push a notification to designated personnel, telling them the type of alert and location so medical attention can be sought.
Gilbane has been using this technology by Triax on site for over 18 months. Currently, Gilbane uses Spot-r at 10 job sites. In the event of a job site incident, Spot-r’s automatic fall notifications or push-button alerts allow the worker to communicate their location, name, and what happened to a supervisor. Supervisors can be contacted at any time, from anywhere in the field, improving response time.
Travelers insures many of Gilbane’s projects, and job site data is shared with Travelers in order to understand how this technology can help decrease safety risks.
“At the end of the day, we will have better insight into the kinds of things that are happening on site,” Bob Kreuzer, VP of construction risk control at Travelers, told BuiltWorlds. “Our objective is to develop a stronger point of view around how wearables can be leveraged on the job site to help protect workers.”
According to the article, when Travelers combined Spot-r safety and productivity data with key loss stats, they found that about 43 percent of workers’ compensation losses occurred with employees in their first year of employment.
“In that instance, we can take that loss data and help customers make a change in how they approach a certain segment in the workforce, utilizing new technology tools like Spot-r,” he told BuiltWorlds. “The Spot-r system, for example, can set custom notifications for new workers, when a certain trade arrives on site, or even when an OSHA certification is set to expire.
All three companies hope to provide “potent insights” about job site safety across project sizes in the future, according to the article.
Source: BuildWorlds
