SafeGuard raises $8 million for its AI solution to automate decision-making in construction zones
In the US alone, three workers die each day on the job in the construction industry, with injuries taking place roughly every three minutes
Safety-tech company SafeGuard has announced that it has secured an $8 million Series A funding round for its machine learning technology that identifies dangerous patterns and enforces preemptive measures for construction sites. The funding was led by investors Ron Zuckerman and Hillel Kobrinsky, with an additional group of real estate investors including Ronen Peled, Yehuda Rachamim, Zemach Hammerman, and Wall Street investor Jeffrey Schoenfeld also participating. The funding comes at the same time as the creation of Otoos, a SafeGuard subsidiary company that will focus exclusively on the U.S. construction industry.
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“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,” said Izhak Paz, CEO and founder of SafeGuard. “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,” Paz added.
In the U.S. alone, three workers die each day on the job in the construction industry, with injuries taking place roughly every three minutes. Since 90% of all errors are human-caused, injuries continue to rise despite new apps or equipment being deployed on job sites. SafeGuard’s technology prevents accidents in real-time by deploying an automated decision making-platform. Its platform collects data from multiple sources like cameras, sensors, drones, and open data, and algorithms then identify on-site human error patterns and uses AI to produce proactive measures that can avoid accidents. SafeGuard can stop a construction worker who may be on his/her way to making a mistake by locking them out of the system or using alerts to prevent the worker from acting out a fatal mistake.
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“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,” added lead investor Hillel Kobrinsky. “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,” Kobrinsky concluded.
SafeGuard was founded in 2016 and according to its data has to date saved more than 2,745 lives. Its platform helps reduce accidents in industries like construction, ports, and more.
