At the start of last year, software solutions provider Causeway announced it had acquired biometrics specialist Donseed in a move that enhanced the range of products\u00a0the company was able to provide to\u00a0its clients.<\/p>\n
According to Phil Brown, chief executive and executive chairman at Causeway, the move was a strategic acquisition for his company, but it was also one that reflected a growing recognition among both main and subcontractors of the wide range of benefits that can be achieved from investing in biometric technology.<\/p>\n
For 20 years, Causeway has been providing software solutions for contractors. However, rather than developing generic, back-office products, the company specialises\u00a0in helping contractors with\u00a0delivering projects and managing\u00a0their supply chains.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tend not to do back-office stuff \u2013 we\u2019re at the front-end of helping them understand if they\u2019re making or losing money on projects and whether they\u2019re delivering those projects within budget and time constraints,\u201d Brown says. \u201cAt the same time, we have software that enables them\u00a0to integrate processes with their supply chain, whether that\u2019s electronic invoices or supply chain accreditation, and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n
A key area that Causeway was focusing on related to productivity improvements, digital timesheets and how workers clock in and out at construction sites. Traditionally, this was done via paper records in much the same way as visitors to an office building are still typically asked to note down their time of arrival, name and who they are visiting.<\/p>\n
However, Causeway saw that the market was changing and that the demand for workforce attendance controls was increasing, with a need to provide critical intelligence in a\u00a0host of other areas. Furthermore,\u00a0the company observed that such products were not just being deployed by main contractors, but by subcontractors too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt that with the industry employing so many people, and with all the issues around the employment of them, that having a solution which would capture that data and combine it with other project data would be a cool thing to do,\u201d Brown says.<\/p>\n
Many of the biometric technologies being deployed at that time had been developed by companies that primarily provide hard infrastructure, such as turnstiles to manage site access. That was a challenge because Causeway wanted to invest in something that could be used on any construction site anywhere in the country. It saw Donseed as the solution to the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe considered it to be the most advanced provider of technology in that space,\u201d Brown says. \u201cOther people who were out there providing that service typically came from the turnstile, so effectively guys who manufactured gates and had added in the biometric piece on top of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonseed from day one was a pure-play technology provider that could effectively work with any type of access control kit, as well as portable solutions. We liked that \u2013 it was logical.\u201d<\/p>\n
The newly named Causeway Donseed was founded in 2013 by Ollie McGovern. He says that most biometric solutions to date simply provide a means of identifying workers, but adds that this misses a trick. \u201cOne of the key benefits is around identity, but now with concerns around health and safety compliance, risk management and productivity, there is a desire from customers to do more than simply identify someone via biometrics, collecting business-critical data\u00a0about personnel at point of sign-in\u00a0or sign-out is a also a necessity,\u201d\u00a0McGovern says.<\/p>\n
A simple description of how the Causeway Donseed system works illustrates the point.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are a worker turning up on a construction site and use our solution \u2013 either fingerprint or face recognition \u2013 for the first time, the system will take you through a touchscreen interface where you have to acknowledge GDPR, site-specific health and safety PPE rules and answer any bespoke questions set by the client,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are enrolled biometrically on a site, but you are also complying with site specific health and safety rules and acknowledging data protection. For the contractors, that means that they are capturing a one off, real-time identity of a worker and that biometric identity is a single template that they then don\u2019t have to re-register on any other site for that contractor.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the benefits of an intelligent biometric system for contractors go much further, not least in ensuring that they have an indisputable record that a worker has understood and accepted health and safety rules. \u201cIt reduces the risk of a contractor getting an incorrect health and safety claim retrospectively,\u201d\u00a0McGovern says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistorically, people would sign in and out on paper and a contractor would produce a paper-based site induction or site health and safety document. Workers could leave site and then two years later make a claim for compensation. Most companies would then have to go back and find paper records from two years previously, which may not be found or be illegible. So, there is a reputational risk. There is a commercial impact and obviously there is the time and effort by management to deliver on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it is not just about protecting employers from potentially vexatious claims \u2013 it is also about protecting workers. The firm says intelligent biometric systems which are\u00a0powered by powerful back-end software solutions can be updated at any time, meaning that as circumstances change, those changes can be communicated.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an alternative way to communicate with your workforce and improve health and safety compliance because you are able to remind them at any time about health and safety rules,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a legal requirement for people to sign in and out of a site every day, so at that point if you choose to you can remind them about health and safety rules daily. You can update changes or risks to individual workers on a daily basis. All of that is recorded and time and date stamped. If health and safety rules change overnight, they can be updated in the cloud, pushed out to devices and you can update workers in the morning to acknowledge it when they sign in.\u201d<\/p>\n
A primary reason why contractors invest in such technology is that it can quickly and materially have a positive impact on the bottom line. Quite simply, the technology provides a far more accurate record of the hours a worker has actually put in on site.<\/p>\n