A recent movement sweeping the industrial space is a high demand for worksite optimization data.
Increasingly, corporations are relying on location data to understand how people move on the jobsite in order to improve overall safety. This is complex to do and often involves many types of data and interactions: location & presence, access to physical locations or devices, and reporting & analysis of all of the data collected.
One of the ways we capture the entire picture is through strategic partnerships, combining our efforts with companies who provide physical access control, computer vision, or other industrial technology. However, not all partnerships are equal.
Besides our current partnerships, we have also served our clients by evaluating and implementing multi-vendor installation solutions. This gives them the best of both worlds as they connect their real world data from humans on site to their digital information warehouses.
WHAT SHOULD YOU LOOK FOR WHEN EVALUATING DATA INTEGRATIONS AND MULTI-PARTNER DEALS?
Finding partners whose technology adds an additional layer of value to both parties, making it a mutually beneficial relationship.
It’s rarely worth it to find two vendors who both offer proximity data (there’s nothing new added there). But finding a vendor who can complement proximity data with rich sensor data on noise, chemical, and radiological exposure allows for data to be compared in sophisticated and subtle ways.
There’s an important caveat here: the data that is collected needs to be available in a structured and accessible way from both sides.
The usual expectation these days is that both parties have a public-facing Application Program Interface (API) where you can gather all of the relevant data on demand. Unfortunately, if you can’t extract the data from one of the partners easily, the whole exercise is moot. So make sure you’re not just evaluating the quality of the data gathered from each vendor, but also the portability of it.
EXAMPLE: TRIAX + EARTHCAM
Our partnership with EarthCam has enhanced our current Spot-r Access solution.
EarthCam has a video-powered solution that captures footage of every person entering or leaving areas that an internet-connected CCTV device monitors. This is a passive logging solution – here’s who was here and here’s when they left.
Spot-r Access can tell managers when someone enters a jobsite, where they accessed the premises and if they had proper credentials, along with many other data points. But this technology alone cannot tell if the person who walked through the gate is actually the person whose name is listed on the report.
We discovered that by integrating a camera into our technology, we added a new level of information to the transaction that proximity data alone couldn’t provide.
Not only is Spot-r Access still telling you when someone arrived, where they entered, and if they should be there, but now managers get visual proof of who entered their worksite as well.
We developed this (and other integrations) in house to take advantage of our analytics and control platforms, building out our core functionality with new pieces as we see good fits or as clients ask for them.
As you evaluate your own data collection and how you integrate it together, remember to ask these 3 key questions:
- What does each vendor provide me? What can they do together?
- How portable is the data? Can I store the data for myself separate from the vendor?
- How complex is an integration? What expertise will be needed to make this integration work?
Triax’s vision is to make all critical jobsite information available in real time to all key stakeholders. To do that, we are taking the lead in building technology and integrations that are class leaders for construction, mining, energy, and industrial jobsites all around the world.
Are you tackling complex data problems at your jobsite? Let us know and we’ll be happy to schedule a free call with one of our engineering implementation experts to help you understand what you need and how to build it – even if it’s not a Triax solution.
