With more than 30 years of experience in New York City, Lettire Construction Corporation is well-known within the mixed-income, affordable, supportive and institutional housing sectors. In 2017, Lettire began using Spot-r on site and hasn’t looked back, calling it a “game changer” for their organization.
“We’re always on the lookout for the latest, most innovative solutions,” said Nick Lettire, Lettire’s President and CEO. “Spot-r…was attractive to use for many reasons – but first and foremost for the critical visibility that it provides.”
Background:
Lettire makes good on their total commitment to safety in several key ways, including training and technology to continuously improve and refine safety practices.
Remote visibility into site operations and safety was traditionally a challenge for Lettire because of the technical and logistical characteristics of an active worksite. Hundreds of workers and materials, machinery and tools spread across several floors makes it hard to know what’s happening across a jobsite at any time. This, combined with the industry’s historic under-investment in innovation and a lack of attention from technology companies, made it difficult for contractors to find practical, scalable platform solutions able to collect and transmit data from a variety of devices. (In short, contractors had a hard time finding these solutions because they weren’t available.) Up to that point, digital solutions for the industry tended to work for specific assets (e.g. equipment or tools) or certain functions only (e.g. payroll or scheduling) – or they were limited in range and scale (able to track equipment outdoors, for example, but not indoors or having to rely on a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone for data upload).
Spot-r overcomes these limitations with a proprietary communications platform that can host and collect/transmit data from a variety of networked devices (worker wearables, sensors tagged onto equipment or tools, etc.), providing comprehensive visibility across a project site. In addition, by not relying on GPS, Spot-r is able to provide vertical (i.e. floor-based) location in addition to horizontal zones – critical for a New York City contractor who specializes in vertical construction projects.
Goals and Results:
Enhanced safety visibility – and preparedness.
Lettire initially adopted the Spot-r system for its safety benefits. The wearable Spot-r Clip acts as a partner in jobsite safety, automatically badging workers into the jobsite when they’re within the Spot-r network on site and providing real-time, floor- and zone-based location.
The ability to know where workers are on site so that supervisors can better react to any incidents that arise cannot be overstated, and the push-button on the bottom of the device allows workers to report other hazards or signal distress from anywhere on site, providing a direct line of communication between workers and supervisors.
“Spot-r gave us all a new sense of safety awareness,” said Lettire. “It not only alerted us to potential dangers that we could quickly address, but it also made the workers more careful, since they realize the device helps identify safety shortcuts and risky behavior.”
Individual worker profiles allow supervisors to track and manage certifications, such as OSHA-10 or OSHA-30, including setting notifications when certifications are due to expire. With the Spot-r EquipTag, which easily adheres to equipment on site, Lettire knows where equipment is located and when it’s being utilized but also who is operating it and whether they’re certified to do so.
In addition, Spot-r’s evacuation capabilities (including the Spot-r EvacTag, which emits a blaring, flashing alarm when activated) represents a stark improvement from the air horn typically relied on to signal an evacuation, which is not always easy to hear across a large site. With real-time headcounts and worker location, Spot-r not only supports the safety of Lettire’s workers but also of first responders, who would have to blindly enter a dangerous situation, such as a fire, with no way of knowing who is out of the building or where people may be located otherwise.
Furthermore, last year we added a dashboard feature that easily exports worker certification information from the Spot-r dashboard into the NYC DOB (New York City Department of Buildings) Local Law 196 format. Local Law 196 updated worker and supervisor training requirements (a minimum of either OSHA 10, 30- or 100-hour training depending on the site) and requires DOB permit holders to maintain (and be able to produce) a log of each worker on site with proof that he/she completed the required training. Spot-r users can mass upload worker certifications (with a photo or PDF to verify) or can include that information when a new worker is created in the system. Together, these features save valuable time and possible fines associated with non-compliance.
Improved Efficiency
“Saving lives and improving our safety culture — there’s nothing more important than that. The fact that we can save money and find ways to run our company more productively is icing on the cake.”
Spot-r administrators and site supervisors at Lettire’s project sites quickly learned how valuable it is to be able to easily and accurately measure how many hours each subcontractor and trade is on site as well as which floor and zone they’re spending the majority of their time. Visibility into resource movements on the jobsite can identify bottlenecks and unlock new efficiencies. What’s more, the Spot-r Procore two-way integration (Procore is their project management solution) automatically syncs time and attendance and safety incident data to Procore, saving valuable time wasted on manual double-entry.
Lastly, by taking advantage of the subcontractor dashboard view, which gives subcontractors access to information related to their specific crew, Lettire improves on-site communication and collaboration.
“It gives them greater visibility into their crews, how many hours they are actually on site and ways they can improve their productivity,” said Lettire. “The workers also like the system because it provides an important new layer of safety that was never there before. Implementing Spot-r is a win-win situation, and it’s pretty remarkable to see management, subcontractors and workers all get behind a new technology.”
Interested in learning how the Spot-r jobsite platform can provide unprecedented visibility into workers, resource and safety to mitigate risks across your project sites? Request a demo today.
