Ensure Construction site safety with AI during Critical times

For any construction site manager, the safety of their workers, community, equipment, and materials is of utmost priority. As of 2020, we have seen a massive shift and upside down changes in every industry. And, by far, the construction industry has suffered the most!

Construction sites were some of the earliest workplaces which were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although work has resumed since the shutdown, the primary issue that hovered over the construction industry has prevailed – How to stay in business under the threat of transmission?

Pre-pandemic construction sites already made sure they complied with government-mandated safety guidelines. Several government healthcare organizations have released specific guidelines for the construction workforce. They include everything from advising workers to wear masks over their nose and mouth to limit close contact with others.

While many companies have adopted these policies and practices on their construction sites, the real problem lies in being able to monitor and enforce them. So, how to maintain social distancing on sites while crews work in confined spaces? How to make sure workers are not staying too close to each other? How to pinpoint someone who’s not wearing a mask and communicate with them virtually? These are the management issues that stayed on top other than day-to-day activities.

Technology in need of times

When it comes to compliance and staying on top of potential health threats, it would be in a dump to say that any site manager wouldn’t love to have an extra set of eyes on the entire project. Luckily today’s technology provides a solution — CCTV cameras. When combined with artificial intelligence, any digital video can deliver new capabilities that not only provide enhanced detection capabilities for keeping order as per guidelines, thus simplifying construction manager’s tasks and maintaining a healthy and safe environment for workers.

Let’s dive into nCircle’s ML-powered Safety Detection Solution

At nCircle Tech, we have crafted a unique solution that allows you to detect the compliance and non-compliance of safety guidelines. By powering it with machine learning, we have made it capable to detect any compliance. For example, in any case, an anomaly is detected, concerned supervisors will be alerted along with a screen capture of the worker. This solution allows you to identify people wearing masks or those who are unmasked. The same concept is applied to other safety equipment as well. The framework alarms the operator if someone is not wearing the mask or essential safety equipment.

The idea is to automatically capture such violations and inform the supervisor to take the right action, thus increasing the safety at the job site, perhaps can even help you with the insurance.

Let’s take a look at how our ML-powered solution can help monitor and maintain COVID-19 construction guidelines to keep workers safe on the job.

Monitor for Social Distancing

On a social site, workers are often moving around quickly in tight spaces, nooks, and corners. Workers may not realize they are even breaking any rules as they return to their daily routines and move quickly around the site. On the other hand, management can’t watch every employee make sure social distancing is taking place.

ML-powered security-cams can monitor how close workers are coming to one another. For example, our solution provides the ability to see measurements between workers and warns if it seems necessary to (if the contact prolongs for an extended time). Our solution also generates data at the end, which can give managers an insight on which areas on the site are most prone to social distancing violations. Thus, helping in the creation of revised work procedures that can mitigate any problem.

Face Mask Detection

At times, workers may unconsciously remove their masks to get some fresh air, which might cause problems as even one maskless worker can risk getting infected and spread it further in the workforce.

Similar to the above-mentioned framework, our solution can detect whether or not a face mask is being worn. We understand that the industry cannot afford to be shut down again, and for such, we believe this type of face mask detection can assist management in making sure that any failure to comply pontificates before it gets out of hand.

Check out the video to see Machine Learning Solution for Mask/No Mask

Video: 

Occupancy Tracking

For construction sites, it is a difficult task to track the influx of people coming and going out. From drivers, contractors, developers, workers, all come and go every hour. Rather than having a person stand at the site’s gate to count manually, our solution can manage it with much ease.

Footage and data from the CCTV cameras can be leveraged to analyze and review foot traffic. If one area seems to be the problem spot, managers can consider changing intake traffic and take quick action on it.

Summary

The construction domain might be back in the business right now, but the right steps and procedures needed to be taken might seem overwhelming for management teams. But let us tell you that CCTV cameras, when ingrained with the right technology, can do more than their name implies. Also, it’s not just compliance, but also about building trust with the employees. When it comes to keeping workers and their surroundings safe during these difficult times, artificial technology can help provide an effective solution.

Learn more about why you should be leveraging nCircle’s ML powered Safety Detection application.