New technologies are reducing workers’ compensation claims and fraud across all industries.
But in construction, the results are filmed.
Working with Arrowsight, a safety technology company specializing in behavioral modification and video coaching analytics, specialized cameras are installed around job sites. These cameras will capture things like workers lunging under a load of lumber hanging from a crane or failing to attach themselves to safety harnesses balanced above the ground. Videos are flagged by a team and security officials are informed. Workers then receive feedback and appropriate training.
In New York, where the cost of workers’ compensation insurance and the frequency and severity of claims are among the highest in the country, safety improvements through camera monitoring are so dramatic on construction sites that insurer Zurich North America announced Friday that it will only insure construction fencing projects that have installed Arrowsight’s video analytics and coaching.
A three-year, $2 billion pilot program at nine large-scale construction sites in New York showed a more than 70% reduction in worker claims and a near elimination of racketeering charges in New York when Arrowsight’s video analysis and coaching were implemented, the insurer said.
“These dramatic results highlight the power of combining human insight and technology to generate measurable change,” Tobias Cushing, head of construction at Zurich, told CNBC. “We have seen a near elimination of serious injuries and fatalities on projects with Arrowsight.”
Arrowsight cameras on site.
Arrow sight
Arrowsight uses mobile, battery-powered, cellular-enabled fixed-point cameras that can operate without electricity or internet.
“We have a whole program where we bring in civil engineers overnight to look at all of these high-risk work activities and then provide feedback, sort of coaching clips, like you would see on Sports Center, to help supervisors coach workers to avoid taking those kinds of risks,” said Adam Aronson, founder and CEO of Arrowsight.
It has helped increase worker safety compliance rates from approximately 70% before Arrowsight was implemented to 97% to 100% in many cases, according to pilot program data.
Arrowsight’s technology was already being used in a range of other sectors, from healthcare facilities to meatpacking plants, before Aronson identified construction as an industry that could benefit from video-based technology.
Posillico Civil was the first civil construction company in the United States to work with Arrowsight. The four-year pilot study resulted in the company’s Experience Modification Rate (EMR), a key claims and incident rating that factors in workers’ compensation premiums, dropping from 0.65 to 0.25. The DME represents a relative safety score, with scores less than one being favorable.
Arrowsight also signed a master services agreement with Chubb this summer, focused primarily on construction.