Pappas
Use cases for deploying artificial intelligence to augment safety practices on jobsites took center stage at the Construction Industry Institute’s annual conference. Over the past year, a research team consisting of academics from Texas A&M University and Louisiana State University, along with about 20 construction industry professionals, identified 19 best use cases for AI in safety protocols and created a tool to match those with currently available methods to best address them.
Wearables and generative AI can be linked to predict and identify the most dangerous jobsite locations and set up a geofence to alert tradespeople when they enter a high-risk area, said team vice-chair Sarah Wilson, a senior project manager at Procter & Gamble during a presentation at the conference, held July 29-31 in Nashville.
remain, such as the high cost of AI implementation and convincing tradespeople that jobsite cameras and wearables will support their work rather than used for surveillance, said Yongcheol Lee, an associate professor at LSU. But AI can help companies maintain consistent safety messaging, provide real-time situational awareness to aid in decision-making and help predict and reduce hazards, the researcher said.
The tool will be available from CII’s website in the fall at www.construction-institute.org.
Another research team created a tool available now that helps consolidate and provide guidance on more than 30 years of CII safety implementation best practices. It incorporates more recent safety strategies that better reflect human behavior and performance, employee well-being and the promotion of positive reinforcement.
“I’ve been around safety research for 30 years, but one of the things that surprised me in a good way is the talk about positive traits [in recent case studies],” said John Gambatese, a professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. Top performing companies that promote positive safety program culture in addition to preventing the negative “get a workforce that listens, understands and accepts and is willing to go along the journey,” he added.
Researchers also presented a framework to help project teams reduce embodied carbon emissions on capital projects. The resource enables integrating decarbonization into existing project metrics—such as safety, quality and schedule—and identifies strategies that can help reduce project costs along with embodied carbon.
Taking the Reins
The institute, based at the University of Texas at Austin, also announced a leadership transition. Mike Pappas will take over as executive director on Nov. 1, replacing Jamie Gerbrecht, who led the group for the past three years. Pappas currently serves as project management program director at Los Alamos National Laboratory and had been associate CII director from 2017 to 2021.
