Page 16 - OHS, March 2022

PPE: WEARABLE DEVICES
Four Reasons Construction Managers Should Implement
Wearables on the Jobsite
The benefits of wearables extend beyond safety.
IBY RAMA SREENIVASAN
n 2019, nearly 20 percent1 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
Eighty-three percent2 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.
For example, 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, wearables 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
Deliver Training and
Feedback More Efficiently
Training is a crucial component of maintaining a safe construction site. If you don’t effectively train your workers, the probability that violations and incidents will occur skyrockets. One way you can build a greater culture of safety is by improving your training with wearables.
Similar to the use case for verifying steps of a project, wearables enable SMEs to remotely deliver instructions to crew members.
This gives workers greater access to an SME. Rather than waiting for them to drive to the site, which can run up billable hours and stall progress, a wearable allows an SME to deliver feedback quickly, with the aid of live video feeds.
For example, a worker may run into issues programming a circuit board on your site. They put on smart glasses, call an SME and stream a video of the board. The remote SME can then use this live stream to provide further instruction.
It’s worth noting that not every situation calls for a wearable. It would be impossible for an SME or supervisor to remotely inspect something like a gas leak, for example, which often requires a sense of smell to detect. Like any other tool, it is important that you use wearables in the right context.
12 Occupational Health & Safety | MARCH 2022
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average cost to a company for a worker’s medically consulted (i.e., serious) injury is $42,000.3 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.
Wearables that track workers’ vital signs (like some smart watches) can mitigate costs related to injuries and other incidents. On-site managers can view reports from these wearables, which gives them greater insight into regulating the health and productivity of their crew.
Let’s say it is the summer and your whole crew is working on foundation digging. You receive a warning, transmitted by their wearables, that two of your workers’ heart rates are rising quickly. You use this as an opportunity to pull them into the shade and get the whole crew some time to rest and hydrate.
In this case, wearables enable you to protect your workers from something like heat stroke, which could incapacitate them for days. The cost to equip your crew with wearables pales in comparison to the cost of their medical emergencies and missed work.
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