CIOInsider India Magazine

Many precautions are taken to guarantee construction site safety for workers, including conducting safety drills and donning the appropriate safety gear. Numerous digital tools, such as fleet dash cams and wearable technology, can help raise safety standards in construction safety management. Ensuring electrical safety on construction sites or preventing being struck by objects and getting entangled between objects are inevitable and a big issue for building developers and construction companies as well as for the workers and their families, as it causes work to become stagnant and costs a huge amount of money to replace. To make the sector safer, though, people are now looking to technology for fresh and creative solutions.

Long before the digital age began, in October 1974, the Health and Safety at Work Act came into effect. After 48 years, the Act is still in effect, and successful organizations still value health and safety. However, there have been substantial changes to the way companies approach achieving health and safety compliance.

Into the Digital Toolbox that Assures Safety and Wellbeing of Personnel
From using only analog systems to using digital solutions, the construction industry has progressed significantly. The industry has been able to overcome its constraints, which have long impeded attempts to reduce site safety concerns, thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. These are a few ways that digital technology is changing the field of construction safety management.

In a recent interaction with CEO Insights Asia magazine, Ann Bernardino-Lim, General Manager, HILTI Philippines, says, “Technology is one of the most critical drivers of improving the safety of every stakeholder in the construction industry.”

She highlighted that her company focuses on three long-term strategies: safety, productivity, and sustainability.

“On safety right now, we are stepping up in understanding the needs of different workers, as we are discovering new methodologies and technologies that are also coming into the construction space. So we calibrate what we see outside, how it's coming up and how it's relevant to our business. We actively invest in R & D to make sure the technology we offer at the safety side is always at par or the best in the market”.

Safety Protocols is a Must in Company Document Control Procedure
Employing a digital safety management system guarantees that all aspects of the company, including the linked supply chain, adhere to the appropriate safety protocols and guidelines. This ought to be incorporated into the company's document control procedure, which maintains papers relevant to the most recent legal requirements and industry best practices.

Enable Easy Access to Safety Performance and Compliance
Achieve higher levels of transparency within your company, ensuring that managers at all levels can easily view their safety performance and compliance from any location.

Automate Paperwork to Save Time
Paperwork related to health and safety compliance usually takes up a lot of time for busy project management teams. By converting to a digital safety management system, managers and supervisors can complete paperwork for daily or weekly records on-site using their tablets or phones, saving time. On smartphones or tablets, an app that makes all records and reports easily accessible and editable while on location can be downloaded.

Thousands of paper-based checklists, paperwork, forms, and reports that make compliance a hassle are being phased out by many top construction companies. Digitizing safety procedures saves time and money, increases team productivity, and—most importantly—showcases your company's continued dedication to construction site safety.

Educating Digital Safety
The foundation of every safe workplace is safety education. Additionally, digitalizing safety training gives organizations a dependable and highly efficient means of raising awareness, disseminating information, and exchanging best practice results and achievements. Complacency (becoming unduly acclimated to a task's execution) or inexperience are blamed for a lot of workplace injuries, particularly in cases where the victim is new to their line of work, function, location, or organization. You can monitor compliance and manage employee training needs with the use of a digital solution.

Protecting Personnel with Wearables
It can be as simple as a wearable that continuously monitors vital signs or as sophisticated as a "smart vest" that cushions a person in an accident by functioning as an airbag in a vehicle. Wearable technology is getting lighter, cheaper, and smaller—as is the case with all technology.

Wearables can save lives by instantly locating employees after a risky incident when combined with localization technology. An event will be reported right away to project managers, supervisors, and any nearby team members. If needed, emergency services will also be alerted. The program finds the pertinent safety resources well in advance of emergency services arriving on the spot and gives quick access to emergency procedures.

Foreseeing Hazards
AI is faster and more efficient than a human at gathering data, making deductions, and making predictions. Though the technology is still in its infancy, its potential is incredibly exciting. Imagine being able to predict the future by analyzing historical safety data. With the help of this wonderful insight, you may take preventive measures to ensure the safety of your employees. Trend analysis, correlation analysis, and problem identification are getting simpler as more construction companies adopt digital technologies to gather safety data.

Heightening Safety through Drones
Increasingly, construction sites are making use of drone technology. These unmanned aerial vehicles possess the ability to scale heights, peer through narrow openings for enhanced perspectives, and aid in your comprehension of the effects of altering site circumstances. A lot of inspections are done at a height. Because they can be completed remotely while employees remain safe on the ground, drones make these tasks safer. Drones can also assist in maintaining vast and intricate building sites' on-the-ground safety work environments.

Companies are starting to test out new approaches to using drones to increase workplace safety. For example, some groups are equipping drones with sensors to warn employees of potential chemical or gas leaks. In an effort to minimize back injuries and lifting, some are evaluating the viability of utilizing drones to move tools and equipment across sizable sites.

Drones could become as commonplace on a construction site as heavy machinery like cranes and forklifts in the coming years, according to some observers. Drones are assisting construction teams in working more efficiently and safely while completing tasks more quickly than by replacing workers.