admin
Anantha Sayana
Chief Digital Officer, L&T
Foreword
The word ‘SAFE’ is being used more in conversations and writing over the last three months than ever before in the history of mankind. Never have we been so obsessed and anxious about being safe as today. Every communication today begins with a “hope you are safe”. The Corona Virus has instilled in all of us the importance of being SAFE; to remain Safe from the
pandemic infection.
However, the dictionary defines safe as “protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost”. The overall meaning and import of Safety continues to cover all aspects of potential physical harm to human beings and to us, at L&T Construction, the quest is about what all can we do to keep all
our people safe.
After several discussions with our Safety leaders and brainstorming and thinking internally, we now have a bouquet of Digital Solutions that help our Safety function in many ways.
When we started our journey of Digital Transformation at L&T Construction four years ago, fully realizing that Safety was such an important function in our business, we asked ourselves, what we could do to improve Safety with Digital Solutions. After several discussions with our Safety leaders and brainstorming and thinking internally, we now have a bouquet of Digital Solutions that help our Safety function in many ways.
Our Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality modules have taken safety training to another level; experiential, immersive, and intensely impactful. Simple 3-minute modules with speech in local languages delivered over the VR glasses at the sites to workmen without any other complex technical infrastructure have conveyed a powerful message to them that has been acknowledged as leaving a lasting impact.
The Safety App rolled out in different forms across all the businesses and project sites, covers every aspect of the safety process. It ensures that everything is recorded at the source, the site, by the person on the field in real-time, verifications and approvals done online to improve safety process compliance significantly.
The Ib4U App – Inspect Before Use – helps to inspect every harness, block, tackle, wire, and equipment before they are used to ensure their safety and adherence to specifications.
Our WISA (Workmen Induction and Skills Availability) App using face recognition can inform a supervisor about a workman’s profile in real-time whether he has the necessary skill sets and certification to perform a particular
kind of work.
It is heartening to note that all these solutions have been widely and well adopted and have become the norm. The dashboards and analytics provide very good inputs during periodic reviews to enable ongoing improvements.
Back to where we started this article. We started thinking about how we could help our people to be “safe” during the pandemic and have developed COVID modules in our solutions to take care of these requirements.
The Ib4U App has a module to record the temperatures of workmen during screening with a thermal gun.
All the checklists relating to sanitization and other processes have been incorporated into the App as per the standard, published SOPs.
The use of face mask and social distancing are said to be the two most powerful deterrents to the spread of the virus and the means to keeping us safe. We are developing an Artificial Intelligence based digital solution that can detect these violations and alert supervisors. We hope to deploy this solution soon.
It is heartening to note that all these solutions have been widely and well adopted and have become the norm.
The current Covid-19 situation brings with it many challenges in the working of our people at our project sites. It is time to be extra vigilant on Safety during these times and communicate with workmen and employees to ensure our care. Please make use of the digital solutions to assist you in a small way in this endeavour.
Be Safe and take care!
Best wishes!