Four Reasons Construction Managers Should Implement Wearables on the Jobsite
The benefits of wearables extend beyond safety.
- By Rama Sreenivasan
- Mar 01, 2022
In 2019, nearly 20 percent of all worker deaths in the private sector were from construction. While certain dangers are inherent to this line of work, one way construction managers can promote a safer work environment is by equipping their teams with wearable devices.
However, the benefits of wearables extend beyond safety. Wearables can also facilitate remote inspections and help you retain staff, which can boost the level of efficiency and knowledge on your site. Here is a look at how implementing wearables can improve your construction site’s operations.
Optimize Safety Procedures
83 percent of contractors believe that wearables could improve their on-site safety, but only six percent report actually using them. This disconnect likely indicates that decision makers don’t recognize the value wearables can add.
But that value is significant.
Take verifying the steps of a process, a fundamental aspect of jobsite safety.
Without wearables, workers either have to call over a supervisor to verify or do it themselves. The former requires having SMEs onsite. The latter requires crews to have enough experience to do verification correctly.
With wearables—say, a pair of smart glasses—a worker can stream live video or upload photos to a cloud server. A remote SME can view the video or images while on the phone with the worker, guide them through any necessary fixes, and verify the work and then take a call from a worker on a different site. In other words, can efficiently limit worksite mistakes, thus improving safety and driving down the personnel costs and those associated with dismantling and restarting parts of a project.
Monitor Employee Health
The most recent data from the National Safety Council (NSC) shows that the average cost to a company for a worker’s medically consulted (i.e., serious) injury is $42,000. Worker injuries represent a massive loss for the construction industry. In 2019 alone, 70,000,000 days were lost due to worker injuries. This leads to a slew of additional costs, ranging from hiring temporary contractors to repairing any machinery damaged in the workplace incident.
This article originally appeared in the March 1, 2022 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.