Construction is picking up at a rapid clip. We see construction jobs have increased in 184 metro areas between April 2024 and April 2025. As these projects pick up speed, we must consider how we create a culture of safety around the jobsite.
This is something we have written about a number of times. And I have talked about this very subject matter countless times on my radio program, The Peggy Smedley Show. PPE (personal protective equipment) such as hard hats have only become mandatory on jobsites in the last half a century or so. If we follow the numbers, then we also know safety has improved since that time. Worker deaths in America are down from about 38 worker deaths a day in 1970 to sadly 15 a day in 2019. While it is not necessarily a direct correlation to PPE, it is certainly an interesting trend to continue to keep an eye on.
While we have said time and time again that safety starts with company at the top and through the culture of the company, the technology also continues to advance in new and exciting ways. Let’s look at this today. During the past few years, we have seen new gear come to jobsites.
If we go back to World of Concrete 2024, we saw Delta Plus and Mips announced the launch of the Delta Plus Americana Climbing Type II Mips helmet, equipped with the Mips Elevate Core system. The technology is integrated directly into the helmet and it is designed to help redirect dangerous rotational motion of certain angled impacts. Certainly, this is only one example of advancement. And it is having a huge impact on safety awareness.
More recently, in May of this year, we see Securis has partnered with Twiceme Technology. Securis plans to integrate Twiceme’s smart safety technology into its entire product line of industrial head protection. This integration means safety managers will be able to improve operational efficiency and heighten safety protocols with Twiceme’s Safety Management Portal. Securis helmets with Twiceme will be available starting in July 2025.
The bottomline is smarter technology on jobsites can improve daily safety management procedures, while reducing incident management time.
All of this has me thinking about the history of hard hats in the construction industry. Long gone are the days of men hanging off the top of the empire state building, nary a hard hat to be seen. But we aren’t quite yet at the days of widespread adoption of connected hard hats, streaming data about connected workers’ health and more. There is still a long way to go before this future vision is truly a reality on our jobsites.
So, what exactly is the hold up then? Let’s look back to look forward. Many of us will remember DAQRI, which was an AR (augmented reality) company that launched in 2010 with a big vision: to provide an AR smart helmet. The company folded less than a decade later. The question becomes why?
Candidly, while the concept was great, the product had high costs, technical challenges, and wasn’t able to pivot when needed. Also, if I am being honest, when I chatted with the folks and tried the product myself, there wasn’t really a great focus on safety. Being a Monday Morning quarterback I’d say too perhaps too much focus was put on the technology for the sake of technology. It didn’t serve a niche need in construction—and the price was truly too high for the industry it was trying to serve. But let’s be very clear, the idea was good and opened the door for others to think about the future of safety. In fact, I’d go as far as to say, it opened the door for other tech companies to reconsider safety and even figure out the proper pricing recognizing what the industry was willing to shell out when it comes to protecting workers.
Now, we are seeing new entrants with a very specific focus and intent to improve safety. More “smart” hard hats continue to come to market with a sole purpose: to improve safety. Time will tell how widespread adoption becomes in the construction industry.
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