Group focused on using AI for construction safety gains key members

Five notable firms have joined a construction industry group aiming to use artificial intelligence to predict hazards and conditions that lead to safety incidents at construction sites.

Skanska USA, Skanska Sweden, Webcor Builders, Obayashi, and concrete contractor Lithko Contracting have joined the Predictive Analytics Strategic Council. That group was launched earlier this year to share and analyze safety data.

The group uses an artificial intelligence-based system, called Vinnie, from image-analysis firm Smartvid.io that aggregates information from each firm to predict incidents and hazards. The council’s founding members were Suffolk, Barton Malow, DPR Construction, JE Dunn, Messer Construction Co., Mortenson, Shawmut Design and Construction, the Bouygues Group, and insurance broker Aon.

A Smartvid.io and Suffolk study showed that Vinnie learned to predict roughly one in five safety incidents with 81% accuracy. The goal of the group is to more accurately identify safety hazards before they cause incidents by analyzing data from all participants.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.