How Digital ID Badges Transform Construction Sites

 

Background

The project management and safety team at Clayco, a multi billion dollar construction company, had many challenges at their job-sites:

  1. Knowing who was doing the work
  2. Knowing if workers were currently compliant with rules, regulations, and certifications
  3. If workers were doing their work safely
  4. Providing timely updates to their construction owners.

Clayco had used traditional plastic IDs and pen-and-paper processes at their job-sites for years, which are slow and inefficient.  When the opportunity came up to try digital ID badges, Clayco immediately realized the advantages and went with Virtual Badge.

 

About Clayco

 Clayco is a full-service, turnkey real estate, architecture, engineering, design-build and construction firm that delivers clients around the world the highest quality solutions on time, on budget and above and beyond expectations. Clayco is dedicated to the art and science of building in a constantly evolving way. Clayco seeks out new technologies, new methods, new ways to execute high quality, mission critical projects. They’ve been innovating since Clayco’s inception in 1984, from being one of the first to utilize a full-room computer server to the data- collecting project site drones Clayco utilizes today.

 

Traditional Systems Cause Challenges At Job-Sites

 

Credentialing & Safety Management Issues Create Risk:

  • Clayco needed an identity management system that updated and tracked safety credentials.
  • Clayco couldn’t easily audit their sub-contractors’ skills & certifications to reduce risk and had no easy way to view this data.
  • Clayco wanted to upgrade to a turnkey process to report safety violations, correct them in a timely manner, and review, and audit them for safety improvement, and wasn’t available to the people who needed it, when they wanted it.
  • Clayco needed a simple visitor management system to know who was arriving on-site & why they were there.
  • Clayco had difficulties with providing accurate reports about the project to the owners on a regular basis.
  • Clayco wanted to upgrade to a simple and reliable process to send notifications and alerts to everyone on-site.

 

The Experience Before Virtual Badge:

  • Workers may or may not be issued a plastic ID badge. During the on-site onboarding process, workers submitted physical copies of their credentials before allowed on-site.
  • Once a contractor was allowed on-site, if their credentialing status changed, Clayco had to receive paper documentation from the worker and then file it away manually.
  • If a safety violation was recorded, it was done with pen and paper, and following-up was very difficult, as was producing an audit trail.
  • Tracking visitors and maintaining site security was difficult because information was only available after the visitor arrived, and Clayco had no way of scheduling appointments and authorizing visitors.
  • It took significant time and effort for Clayco site supervisors to create man-count and hours worked reports to provide to the owners.
  • Clayco relied on word of mouth and text messaging to send site-wide notifications and alerts to workers, which was hard to manage.

 

The Virtual Badge Solution

How Clayco Used Digital IDs to Improve Compliance & Safety:

  • Mobile onboarding process that allows Clayco contractors to register, request a badge, and upload their required safety credentials before they show up for orientation.
  • Mobile administration portal that Clayco supervisors can access to look up any worker’s safety credentials and information.
  • If there is a change to the credentialing status for a worker, Virtual Badge will provide an exception-based update for supervisors.
  • Instant visibility for Clayco to know which workers have safety & OSHA credentials, and a process to notify workers when they need to renew their certifications.
  • Standardized mobile safety issue reporting process allows workers to report issues & instantly alert supervisors to fix them, and allows the data to flow in both directions, in real-time.
  • Streamlined, simple, and affordable process to pre-register visitors, know why they are visiting and/ or what they’re delivering, and issue temporary badges.
  • Simple methods to provide real-time man hour & attendance reporting to project owners A mobile app to send messages & alerts to people who are actively on-site.

 

The Experience With Virtual Badge:

 

  • Workers easily download Virtual Badge from the app store, request a badge, and upload their safety documentation in a matter of minutes.
  • Clayco receives the badge request and can approve or deny instantly.
  • At any time, Clayco can review any workers’ safety and OSHA credentials / status, and a worker receives a notification when a certification is about to expire.
  • Clayco supervisors automatically receive a notification whenever a worker’s credentials change or are updated, which eliminates the need to search through paperwork.
  • Any worker can use Virtual Badge to take a picture of and report a safety issue, which notifies Clayco supervisors, who can perform a corrective action and close out the issue.
  • Clayco supervisors use Virtual Badge as the main program for getting safety information from the field to the office.
  • Visitors download Virtual Badge and register for a temporary badge, which alerts Clayco of who the visitor is, why they’re visiting, and if they have a delivery.
  • Clayco administrators can create reports based on collected data and send this information to project owners as-needed with minimal effort.
  • Clayco can send an alert message through Virtual Badge which will instantly appear on the workers’ phones.

 

The Results

 

How Virtual Badge Helps Clayco Improve Safety & Reduce Risk:  

  • Onboarding time is reduced to around 30 minutes vs taking hours with previous system/ processes.
  • Greatly reduced risk exposure because Clayco always knows who is compliant.
  • Easy methods to report safety violations increase the probability that workers will report issues, which lowers overall risk and liability on the job-site.
  • Clayco has improved security by knowing who is on-site at any given time, which improves site situational awareness, even from Clayco headquarters.
  • By providing accurate reporting on a regular basis, Clayco and the project owner can make more proactive decisions based on real-time information.
  • Clayco has greatly improved communication and safety awareness on-site due to Virtual Badge messaging, because Clayco now has the ability to connect every worker to a single system.

 

Quotes From On-Site Supervisors

'Before Virtual Badge, we had to collect mountains of paperwork from our contractors and it was hard to tell who had which certifications. Thankfully, this problem disappeared when we started using Virtual Badge.'

- Mike Lovejoy, Safety Manager

 

“Virtual Badge is a great way to verify, share, store, and control on-site personal credentials.  Helping us to keep the job-site safe and organized when you need it the most.”

- Victor Mannina, Superintendent