Triax Technologies Inc.
SPOT-R

Keeping track of workers is critical on construction sites, and spot-r is making that task much easier.

The wearable system, developed by Triax Technologies Inc. in Norwalk, Connecticut, is a 2017 Business Insurance Innovation Awards winner.

Chad Hollingsworth, CEO and co-founder of Triax, said that despite being one of the largest industries in the world, the construction business is still lacking on the tech side.

“They don’t have a lot of modern technology to help with safety,” he said, “and it’s a very dangerous work environment. So we saw that as an opportunity to come up with a solution for this market to help make the workers safer and help insurance companies have data that they haven’t had before.”

In addition to locating workers on a job site, the spot-r devices are designed to identify and measure slips, trips and falls, and to alert site supervisors to incidents as they happen.

Mr. Hollingsworth said that spot-r consists of three components: a sensor worn by workers at a site, a network set up at the site location and cloud software that allows operators to view and interact with the data.

“If you’re trying to find a specific worker or if there is some kind of accident, you know who’s there and who’s around when it’s going on,” he said.

Mr. Hollingsworth said Triax has been building spot-r for over two years and has been making wearable sensors for five.

Pete Schermerhorn, Triax’s president and chief operating officer, said the spot-r technology is also helpful in workers compensation cases.

“With a system like this,” he said, “when there’s a claimed fall or slip or trip on the site, you now have a robust system backing up that claim or data to dispute it because, when there is a fall event on site, we record how high the individual fell, roughly where they were on the site when they fell and who was around them.”

Bernard Ruf, director of operations for Lettire Construction Corp. in New York, said the company has been using spot-r technology for about seven months.

“It’s a good compliance tool,” he said.

“The individuals get the device and they’re clocked in right there. They return it at the end of the day. You know what time they’re on the job site, what time they’re off the job site.”

He said spot-r technology is particularly important in case of an evacuation, as the wearable device has an audible alarm telling workers to go to the muster point. Instead of relying on a head count, site managers will be able to see if all the workers are accounted for by checking their laptops.

“It’s a really cool device,” Mr. Ruf said. “I’ve got 35 years in the construction business, and I’ve never seen anything like this.” 

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