This article is part of a blog series on wearables, exploring what they are and if your business is agile enough to enable collaboration.

The continuous development of technology helped us to evolve our buildings, infrastructure, and commercial facilities. The new tools allow us to construct bigger and more sturdy structures.

The construction industry has been slow in adopting new technologies but has been able to discover amazing innovations in safety. New ideas are developed daily for our workers. The combination of Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things gave birth to wearable technology, which is penetrating the market at a fast speed and benefitting the whole industry.

What are Wearables?

We have not been able to find a commonly accepted definition of wearable technology, but the key components of wearables are as follows:

• they are carried by the laborers using it
• they record and keep safe the data collected about the user
• they inspect and calibrate the workers’ environment.

The most frequent sensors used in wearables are:

• GPS
• accelerometers
• gyroscopes
• electrodes
• thermometers
• proximity sensors.
  

The data collected is used to measure:

• location
• movement
• heart rate
• weather.
  

The wearers can interface with the devices via:

• touchscreen
• speech
• haptic feedback.
  

Some tracking devices only assemble data that are interpreted and analyzed by other devices.

Wearable technology benefits in the construction industry

Let’s contemplate the benefits of wearable technology for the construction industry.

Onsite Safety

It is well-accepted that the construction industry is prone to accidents. Eliminating falls would save more than 300 lives every year in the USA. The statistics show that:

• 1 in 5 deaths among all U.S. workers is in the construction industry. [OSHA]
• of the 42 annual crane-related deaths, around 60% involve a falling object. [BLS]
• A total of 1,008 construction workers died on the job in 2020. [BLS]
• Each year, 10.2 of every 100,000 construction workers suffers a fatal injury, which is the third highest rate of any industry. [BLS]
• Fatal construction injuries are estimated to cost the United States $5 billion each year in health care, lost income, reduced quality of life for family members and lost production. [Midwest EPI]

Safety on construction sites is of paramount importance. Issues are of high interest. Wearable technologies can help to increase safety on site by:

• monitoring the positions of machinery and staff on a construction site to detect and take appropriate actions to safeguard laborers from potential injuries
• introducing innovative tools of risk management.

Safety improvements are considered to be the main benefit of wearable technology.

For example, smartwatches can monitor each individual person on a construction site to inform the safety manager in real time if employees:

• weaken themselves
• require a rest from the scorching sun
• are involved in an accident, such as falling, and divulging the person's location.

Efficiency

Wearable technology increases workers’ efficiency helping them to perform their tasks. For example, exoskeletons will:

• increase the vitality and stamina of staff
• allow them to perform their tasks in less time
• consider their posture to prevent them to bend in a bad manner.

If you integrate wearables with other technologies you can streamline your processes to improve your onsite data collection. Better collection of data boosts your efficiency by:

• eliminating manual tasks
• reducing mistakes
• speeding up the completion time
• reducing the margin of error
• maximizing productivity.

For example, you can use wearables to feed your smartphone applications that will automatically, in real time, generate reports.

Communication

When building an asset collaboration and communication is critical.

Wearable devices can help you to communicate by:

• collecting data in real-time from the site
• relaying information to the proper individual responsible.

For example, a smart hard hat can bring new information to a supervisor, instantaneously, so they can update their data in real-time and produce accurate reports on the advancement of the work on the construction site.

Wearable devices should, if required, allow workers to share:

• photos
• videos
• entire tactile sensations.

For example, a supervisor spotting some employees, approaching dangerous areas, with a risk of them being injured, can send vibrations directly to the worker’s safety vests warning them of the potential hazard. In a noisy environment where alarms are hard to be heard this feature is very convenient.

Attract young workers

The construction industry has a very poor image in young workers' eyes. With baby boomers coming to retirement age, you need to attract younger workers. The use of technology can change the perception of the construction industry of the young generation whilst current employees are retiring.

Millennials and younger generations expect to find in the workplace what they are used to in their private lives:

• smartphones
• cloud computing
• artificial intelligence
• data analytics
• IoT
• the latest gadgets on the market.

To satisfy the younger workers' expectations and attract them to the construction industry we should provide them with wearables. This will be a gigantic step to prove to them that the industry is up to date with the latest developments.

Wearables not only can attract young people to your company but also make your existing workforce happy and increase their job satisfaction and retention as they:

• provide a safer environment
• increase each worker’s efficiency
• reduce job turnover.

Enhance resource planning and management

Managing and planning the use of resources, employees, machinery, and material may give a competitive edge to a construction company bidding for a new job.

With the help of wearables, you can keep an eye on your staff to see:

• when they are unproductive
• If they are making mistakes
• if they try to avoid safety protection measures
• if there are skills gaps in your workforce
• how you need to plan training
• how to ease your scheduling jobs
• how you can eliminate waste
• how to minimize delays
• how to make accurate predictions in planning your projects
• if you need to reorder material on time without human intervention

Challenges of wearables in the construction industry

Despite the introduction of new technologies in the construction industry recently, a few problems have not been resolved.

In project management, the construction industry still faces quite a lot of challenges from the strategy stage to the in-use stage.

Wearable device usage helps monitor, analyze and manage:

• risks
• accidents
• waste.

To achieve your goals at every stage of a project, wearables will be very handy to help you to:

• improve the accuracy of administrative and technical control of your quality
• achieve the goals and scope of work at each stage of the project
• provide more useful real-time information
• impact the wellness of your employees
• reduce a large number of site fatalities and injuries

Unfortunately keeping up with the rapidly changing technologies in an industry as competitive as construction is quite daunting.

Managing and understanding the risks and liabilities associated with technological developments is also a hurdle.

In this article, we highlight the risks and challenges associated with the usage of wearables in the construction industry. The key elements a company should put in place to overcome these challenges are to be able to:

• managing the sophistication of the wearables themselves
• offering wellness programs with wearables
• using specialized tools for their core business
• understanding the commercial applications of wearables.
  

You can use wearables to reduce time-consuming issues in the construction industry like:

• safety
• personnel management
• compliance.
  

Wearables can detect and warn of safety hazards but you have to make sure that your data are reliable and of high-quality to avoid any regulatory compliance pitfalls.

Legal Implications

In legal disputes, wearables can be useful if used appropriately:

• if you are sued for discrimination in an employment lawsuit, the data you collected to track your productivity can be used to justify why you had to get rid of the employee
• a defendant in a workplace-injury lawsuit could use data compiled from wearables about an accident to portray a different story than the one provided by the plaintiff's complaint.

Potential pitfalls can also exist as there are plenty of legal issues associated with wearables:

• a worker is injured trusting a device that did not detect risk as it was supposed to
• an employee did not remember how to use the new technology and was injured.

Failing to detect a hazard

As wearables are supposed to prevent safety incidents, if they fail to perform properly and an employee is hurt, who is liable for the failure:

• the manufacturer of the wearable device?
• the employer?

The answer is not easy, traditional negligence and product liability law will guide the outcome of this issue.

Companies may want to mitigate this risk by:

• maintaining safety-critical wearables in good condition, even if not required by law
• documenting in writing warnings to employees using safety devices, so it will be their responsibility if they refuse to act upon it
• implementing a policy to reduce the potential for liability for employees ignoring safety warnings.
  

Data privacy

Legal issues related to data collected from wearables may bear consequences if they fail to secure the data to:

• improve productivity
• increase efficiency
• streamline processes
• increase bottom lines.
  

To minimize the risks you should:

• control the data collected by wearables to reduce your exposure to liability
• ask employees for their consent, through your collective bargaining agreement, so you can continually upgrade and increase the use of technology
• notify employees in advance of the implementation of new technologies to prevent subsequent violation of privacy claims.
  

Salary & Hours

Tracking whether or not employees are working would be useful information if a wage and hour dispute arises. The data collected by wearables are reliable and objective data to resolve potential claims.

In countries with more employee-friendly employment laws, such as France, mandatory wearable policies may pose a problem.

Technical issues

Some issues that you should address when implementing wearables are:

• administrating your wearables daily
• providing useful analyses
• training your staff effectively to use the wearable devices
• using services that aid with safety and reduce accidents at work sites
• using a real-time location system to track people dynamically.

Sharing safety responsibilities

Monitoring work hazards should be done by everyone on the team. Improving workers' awareness reduces or avoids accidents, reducing the overall risk of a project. You should ask yourself the following questions when you implement wearable technology:

• how will the human element be protected from accidents and injuries?
• how will installations and property be protected against fires and explosions?
• how will the project employees be trained in safe work systems and the uses of personal protection methods?
• how will events and situations be dealt with in an emergency?
• how will safety and the environment be managed? . #### In Conclusion

Despite all the benefits wearable technologies bring to the construction industry they also come with challenges:

• potential liabilities
• compliance implications.

It is of paramount importance that you stay informed of the current evolution and emerging technologies in the construction industry to ensure you are on the leading edge of innovations of safety and efficiency.

At Driving Vision, we believe that the future of wearable in the construction industry is great and will completely revolutionize the traditional way of operating. We can help you to decide if you need to invest in technology.

Our technology diagnostic looks at the best way to incorporate new technology into your workflows. It looks at how to move your organization to cloud computing so you can open up new possibilities for your daily planning tasks. The technology appraisal report will help you to explore what investment is required to improve your projects’ productivity and collaboration as well as the ROI you can expect.

A Driving Vision expert will conduct the interviews online and will issue a report and discuss our findings with you. Together we will decide the best way to implement the solutions at your pace and according to your budget.

Implementing BIM can be daunting, but Driving Vision is here to help you at the pace you are comfortable with. Get started by getting in touch now