The CEO of a construction-tech startup that reports a 12% drop in injuries on sites using its wearable smart badges says 5G is the future of IoT tech
Kwant
- Kwant is a tech startup focused on reducing risk and danger on construction sites.
- The company developed wearable smart badges that made COVID-19 contact tracing more efficient.
- Now it's looking to use 5G tech to reduce construction-site injuries and increase efficiency.
- This article is part of "5G Playbook," a series exploring one of our time's most important tech innovations.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Walbridge construction firm was building a massive electric-vehicle factory development for General Motors. With 5,000 workers on the project, Walbridge faced the monumental task of contact tracing. Inefficient contact tracing meant that workers could be unnecessarily pulled for COVID-19 testing or unintentionally continue to spread the virus. That was frustrating for workers and had a financial cost.
"There are direct costs, and there are indirect costs," John Jurewicz, the director of innovation for Walbridge, said. "Three hundred thousand dollars to shut the job down for the rest of the day if there's a safety incident — that's a lot of money."
To meet this need, Walbridge sought the help of Kwant, a tech startup whose stated goal is to create a safer and more-productive construction industry. For Walbridge, Kwant developed a high-tech wearable badge that could sense how far apart workers were from each other. The workers' badges beeped and vibrated when they got within 6 feet of each other.
If a COVID-19 case was identified, Walbridge could "isolate the workers who came nearby and not shut down the entire job site," Niran Shrestha, a cofounder and the CEO of Kwant, said, adding: "These manufacturing plants were built on time, and thousands of workers were able to be safely employed during the pandemic."
Increasing safety in construction zones
The smart badges, which have other safety features, have proved useful well beyond COVID-19 precautions. Kwant's data shows a 12% reduction in injuries across sites using its badges, significant in the construction context, and an increase in productivity of 11%. Among the key features is the danger-zone restriction.
"With danger-zone restrictions, workers will get notifications when approaching an area they should not be in with an audible alarm and vibration," Shrestha said. "Time is everything when there is an incident. Construction sites can be hazardous and hard to get around when there are incidents. Getting real-time alerts is crucial to safety."
This alert system isn't just reactive, according to Shrestha. Along with the danger-zone restriction, one of the proactive features that the badges have is the ability to identify hazardous events or actions.
"The algorithm has been trained on thousands of hours of data collection to predict if the worker has an anomaly in movement, like lack of focus, intoxication, or jumping from an unauthorized height," said Shrestha. "These movements can trigger alerts for a safety session with the worker to prevent incidents."
Taking things to the next level with 5G
Kwant's smart badges are part of a category known as the Internet of Things. IoT has integrated into almost every sector of life. Put simply, IoT refers to devices with sensors that connect with other devices over a network without needing any human intervention. Some examples are contactless payments, smartwatches, automated irrigation systems, and even home-security systems and motion detectors.
These devices collect and send information over WiFi, Bluetooth, or cellular networks such as 5G. They're a big driving factor for building 5G networks offering higher speeds with fewer interruptions. And 5G is key to Kwant's larger goal of improving the construction business.
Recognizing the potential of smart badges across industries, Shrestha's team has built 5G integration into the badges. Kwant's goal isn't just to make workplaces safer, Shrestha said, but also to make them more efficient with one centralized platform to manage everything from onboarding to workers' compensation, allowing managers to analyze production rates and optimize schedules based on the data provided by 5G-powered IoT systems.
Tech using 5G is "driving change and efficiency in construction-based IoT devices," Shrestha said, adding: "Some of our manufacturing facilities use 5G within their network, and Kwant has the capabilities to utilize the strength of 5G with our customers for a faster and more-efficient approach to project and workforce management."
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