From industrial revolution to the year 1980s, the focus was majorly on industrial and economic growth and development and this resulted in severe environmental consequences. The increasing pollution and depletion of natural resources forced the governments worldwide to give importance to the environment, health & safety. Gradually, frameworks were made that guided businesses to grow while at the same time keeping the notion of sustainability and workplace safety intact.
What is EHS Management in Construction?
Simply speaking, EHS management or Environment, Health & Safety management in construction is a holistic term that focuses on enhancing EHS performance of a construction company. It refers to the application of procedures that focus on ensuring and enhancing workers’ safety and their working environment. These processes play an important role in attaining as well as upholding the overall environmental goals of the construction company. The EHS management constitutes a crucial aspect of any organisation’s operations, including construction, as it not only helps minimize organisation’s environmental impact, but also improves the safety and well-being of the workers, in turn improving employees’ retention, boosting organizational productivity and enhancing the brand image of the company. All these ultimately results in spurring customer and corporate growth.
What is EHS Software?
An EHS software is a tool that offers to the businesses a digitized platform which connects organisation’s safety management goals to an integrated system. This software is extensively used now-a-days in different sectors like construction, mining, manufacturing, oil & gas and the like. The EHS software for construction enables the construction companies to easily track, identify, manage and report on any environmental, health and/or safety issues in the construction jobsites. EHS Software acts as aConstruction Productivity Software for construction companies to notably control as well as prevent workplace hazards, while at the same time enhance productivity in their construction jobsites. Thus, this Software for Subcontractors helps to build a working environment that is safe and cohesive for all working in it.
Why is EHS Software Needed in Construction Jobsites?
The construction industry has had the reputation of being “one of the most dangerous industries” owing to the huge number of accidents and fatalities occurring every now-and-then in the construction jobsites. The construction workers are highly vulnerable to accidents/incidents due to the very nature of the job they perform like, working in confined spaces or at heights, working with/ around heavy machineries, loading heavy loads and the like. According to reports published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), each year 9.7 of every 100,000 construction workers suffer a fatal injury, which is the fourth highest rate of fatal injuries in any industry. In addition to this, the industry has also been traditionally criticized for being ‘non-eco-friendly’ in nature. Statistics show that 35% of world’s industrial waste is solely generated by the construction industry. Further, 32% of world’s natural resources are used by the construction industry. Thus, the notion of EHS management in construction is for Construction & Property Managementat the top of mind of all associated with the industry.
Traditionally, the construction industry has relied on manual means of inspection to ensure the health & safety of the workers. However, the limitations of human monitoring; and the cumbersome, time-consuming and inefficient nature of manual monitoring led to increasing compensation fines on every unwarranted injury/heath issue, in turn affecting productivity in the jobsites. As a result, construction companies need a robust and proactive system that could fulfil all their EHS needs at a single place. This is where the EHS software as a Construction Management Software for construction comes in!
The EHS software solutions can revolutionize as Construction Equipment Maintenance Software as the way in which safety is managed in the construction jobsites by giving a holistic view of all the works in the jobsite; enabling greater speed and accuracy in implementing EHS processes; making access, analysis and sharing of data easier as well as facilitating risk anticipation and management. One such EHS management software for construction is that of viAct. viAct leverages the power of AI video analytics for workplace safety to identify, detect and alert various environmental, health and safety non-compliances in the construction jobsite to empower the safety officials to make quicker and data-driven decisions and preventive measures to control hazards in construction jobsites.
The EHS software helps the construction stakeholders in the following ways:
- Automatic Safety Audits: The EHS softwareas Project Management Software can ease the task of the safety auditors by undergoing real-time safety, health and environmental compliance monitoring like PPE detection, danger zone intrusion detection, carbon footprint monitoring, construction fleet management, and the like, showcased through an intuitive UI via. AI monitoring platform and send out instant and real-time alerts in case of any non-compliance. This facilitates stakeholders to anticipate risks and manage them before it is too late. Further, the captured insights recorded in the cloud platform further helps the safety auditors in their task of safety auditing. EHS software providesConstruction Health & Safety, Quality Software Solutionsand works as Workplace Safety Software.
- Spotting Unsafe Areas & Mitigating Risks: The construction industry measures safety performance through lagging indicators such as counting numbers of illnesses, injuries, and fatalities. The EHS software allows graphical representation of computationally identified safety performance indicators on BIM enabling stakeholders to have automatically generated personalized safety performance reports of the construction job-sites. On the top of that, heat map views help the contractors and safety engineers to spot the most vulnerable areas in the jobsite so that appropriate actions can be taken to prevent casualties and mitigate risks.
- Improved Jobsite Processes & Productivity: With EHS software, stakeholders can not just receive instant, automatic and real-time alerts of any non-compliances detected in the jobsite to avoid any mishappening from taking place; but they can also extract reports anytime of these alerts recorded in the cloud platform. This helps the Managers, Site Inspectors, Contractors and other stakeholders to improve the jobsite processes and enhances productivity.
Thus, in jobsites like construction that are highly vulnerable to safety risks and environmental non-compliances, EHS software are a much-needed tools for the stakeholders to ensure holistic safety, productivity and environmental compliance in the jobsites.
