Digital protection: Safety software’s rise in construction

Safety is complicated. 

Especially if you are a massive general contractor with hundreds of construction sites and tens of thousands of workers that span multiple continents. This has led to the rise of digital tools that are rapidly becoming a must-have in the sector. 

Mark Bryant, Chief Information Officer for PCL and his team is a good example of an organization who has invested significant effort in technology to improve employee engagement and on-site safety. “It allows us to get a good grasp on risk across a significant growing company that operates on two continents,” said Mark Bryant, Chief Information Officer for PCL, one of Canada’s largest general contractors. “Providing a central reporting and management system for our team and all the employees that use it across 1,000 job sites is what it’s all about.” 

Ben Leach, Co-Founder and CEO, and his team at HammerTech saw this need early on and have spent that past decade refining their safety engagement platform.

“We are 10 years on and we’ve still got a roadmap that is focused on safety; it just goes to show how complex safety processes are.” 

Leach began his career over 25 years ago as a site engineer in Melbourne, Australia. Early on, he was assigned to a safety role. He noticed the industry’s inefficiencies in safety management, particularly the heavy administrative burden.

“A lot of it was just administrative work… making sure that you’re documenting every person and piece of equipment that’s coming on site… but you weren’t doing what I think is the most important part which is being out in the field engaging with workers and supervising the risk.”

This was how HammerTech was born in 2013. While many other solutions have sprung up since then, Leach believes it takes time and effort to be able to handle the nation’s largest contractors’ safety needs.
Leach and his team’s construction safety software platform aim to move safety beyond compliance. He believes that by measuring worker and subcontractor engagement with safety processes – in addition to digital processes and comprehensive leading safety data – contractors can make safety a team sport.   

The times are changing

When he first arrived in North America he found that many large, sophisticated builders still had basic safety programs. Leach also saw significant challenges due to limited connectivity on job sites and workers using outdated devices. This lack of modern technology made it difficult to engage subcontractors and workers. 

Today, improved connectivity and the ubiquity of personal smart devices have transformed the landscape. Workers are now accustomed to using their phones for various tasks, and it’s expected they’ll use tools like HammerTech as part of daily operations. 

Leach emphasized that while artificial intelligence is often spotlighted for its “flashy” features, the real value lies in efficiency gains from speeding-up low-value paperwork and leveraging data to enhance decision making that improve safety on-site. What’s valuable today and what HammerTech focuses on is embedding practical AI solutions that address the actual problems faced in the field, rather than adopting generic AI applications.

Now he is witnessing a shifting mindset where firms are seeking comprehensive platforms that not only manage safety documents but manage workflows with subcontractors and workers and also harness data to improve safety outcomes. “Companies are starting to identify that they need something more,” Leach said. “Something that goes beyond documentation to actually consuming the data that comes from all that work.”

He believes that the need to attract labor to overcome shortages as well as protecting the reputation of general contractors and their clients are some of the main factors driving this shift. But there are also major big regulatory updates that are having an impact. 

Ontario recently introduced sweeping legislation that would increase fines for employers and boost sanitary requirements. And new court decisions are redefining the responsibilities owners and general contractors have when it comes to incidents involving subcontractors. 

Leach noted that clients now regard HammerTech as one of the top three critical technologies in their operational stack, alongside project management and financial management tools. 

“The things that come outside of these are the nice-to-haves,” he said. “When you’re building a software business, you always want to be a need-to-have.”

Finding a good fit

The importance of safety management software is clear when looking at PCL Construction, one of the largest general contractors in the country and North America. They built their own solution, SMC, more than a decade ago. But they began to outgrow it. With more than 1,000 job sites across two continents, they needed something more robust. They spent several years planning for either upgrading their current system or transitioning to something better. 

“We knew that our SMC system needed to be replaced or rebuilt,” explained Jim Barry, PCL’s Vice President of Health, Safety and the Environment. “Our system was quite intelligent and we wanted to match up with a new system that would provide all the same benefits and then some.”

The search was extensive. PCL wanted something that could handle all the reports and analysis required for its large teams and also be easy to use by thousands of workers and their different smart devices on site. 

“We deal with about 50,000 people in one day so we wanted to create a venue where they could get the information they need and do what they need to do. We wanted a system that could encompass everything we do,” said Barry.

Barry noted that not only could HammerTech do all the things it wanted—hazard analysis, online orientations, document tracking and more—it was smarter than its competitors, and worked with whatever device a worker was using.

“We chose HammerTech because it offered a level of maturity above and beyond the digitization process that we had in place,” he said. 

More than megabytes 

Recent years have seen many tech companies enter the construction space.

“I wake up in the morning and probably have 15 companies on a daily basis that would like to sell us some new technology,” said Bryant. “And during the past 12 months it’s been more AI magic dust than anything else.”

To sort through these solutions, PCL has an extensive vetting process which includes testing a tool’s technical prowess and going through a detailed security checklist. They also require open, accessible cloud-based solutions so PCL can manage, maintain, organize and access data when they need to. It also has to be easily used in the field by a wide range of phones, tablets and laptops. 

“We look for companies that can act as an extension of PCL,” said Bryant. “We look for partners not suppliers.”

Their process involves more than technical details. They also are careful about the culture of companies they partner with.  

“With HammerTech, we tried it, we played with it, we put it into the field, we did a very good pilot,” said Barry. “We wanted to part with a group of people who had the same values and guiding principles as us. Safety is so dear to us. We need our partners to be the same way. We also wanted a group that we were going to grow with. We know that safety is constantly evolving and we wanted to be on top of it with a partner that could grow with us.”

Retaining workers

Beyond safety performance, Leach highlighted the impact of advanced safety technology on talent retention. HammerTech has become so integral in the industry that it’s frequently mentioned in job postings for safety roles.

“We’ve had people say, ‘I’m not going to take a job if they don’t use HammerTech,'” Leach noted. This trend underscores a broader expectation among the workforce for employers to equip them with modern, efficient tools.

He believes that by embracing technologies like HammerTech, companies not only improve safety and operational efficiency but also enhance their ability to attract and retain top talent. Leach concluded, “If they’re not enabling their people with technology and the right solutions, then they’re losing people. And people are going to go to companies that are well-known for innovation.”