SafeGuard – an international Safety-Tech company that is focused on the construction industry that uses machine learning to predict and prevent accidents in construction sites – announced an $8 million Series A funding round led by investors Ron Zuckerman and Hillel Kobrinsky. And an additional cadre of real estate investors, including Ronen Peled, Yehuda Rachamim, Zemach Hammerman, and renowned investor Jeffrey Schoenfeld are also participating in the round.
Plus SafeGuard is also announcing the creation of Otoos, which is a daughter company that will focus exclusively on the construction industry in the US. Plus SafeGuard will be expanding the use of its end-to-end decision-making solution beyond construction to cover compliance, safety, and everything in between to other industries in dire need of better safety technology. Job-site injuries and deaths have been plaguing the construction industry. In the US alone, 3 workers die every day and a worker gets injured every 3 minutes. Since 90% of all construction accidents are due to human error, fatal and non-fatal injuries continue to rise despite advances in equipment, safety apps, and training. Plus other jobs also carry disproportionate risk. Warehousing accounts for almost 8% of the 2.8 million non-fatal workplace injuries and illnesses reported by private industry employers.
SafeGuard’s technology essentially prevents accidents in real-time with its automated decision-making platform. And SafeGuard is the only platform that collects data simultaneously from multiple sources like cameras, sensors, drones, statistic analysis, open data, and big data to automate on-site decision-making.
The algorithms also identify on-site human error patterns and use AI to predict the probability of an accident occurring. And the predictive data is then converted into proactive measures that enforce good decision-making beforehand.
For example, SafeGuard’s machine learning capabilities are able to identify and stop a construction worker in real-time on the verge of making a mistake, preventing an accident by locking the worker out of the hazardous area. This same technology can be utilized in other industries as it aims to solve accidents at the root.
By implementing SafeGuard’s solution, a leading international construction firm lowered the number of fatal accidents from 10 over a 3-year period between 2016-2019 to just 1 over the last 3 years. And with SafeGuard, hazardous patterns disappeared, and work-related accidents only occurred due to random chance. Plus indirect costs were reduced and “Stop Work Orders” were easily appealed. SafeGuard’s expansion to multiple industries enables all kinds of companies to reduce legal liability and protect the company’s reputation.
KEY QUOTES:
“Construction shouldn’t be the most dangerous job in America. Unfortunately, our field is focused on digitizing compliance rather than innovating decision-support tools, but the reality is that compliance does not assure safety. Only an end-to-end solution that removes the human factor from the equation can prevent accidents and construction site shutdowns, the same is true for industries like manufacturing, maritime or agriculture that suffer from similar issues.”
— Izhak Paz, CEO and founder of SafeGuard
“Accidents lead to huge monetary and resource losses at a corporate level, from project delays to long-term wage loss, legal costs, admin expenses, and equipment damage. SafeGuard’s automated decision-support platform gives project managers peace of mind by providing them with a powerful tool to protect on-site workers from human errors, thereby preventing accidents in real-time.”
— Lead investor Hillel Kobrinsky
