Fixing contact tracing in construction: working with a highly transient workforce.

November 2, 2020

Fixing contact tracing in construction | The SignOnSite Blog

The construction industry has a unique challenge when it comes to COVID-19 management and contact-tracing requirements: having to manage a highly transient workforce. Construction workers often work across multiple sites and under the management of multiple General Contractors - where someone works on a Monday is often completely different to where they will be on a Wednesday. This means that the vast majority of current contract-tracing solutions don't actually work in construction.

The challenge is mapped out below. In a typical industry (left side of the image), businesses (blue dots) will have staff (green dots) operate in various locations (clusters of dots). They generally stay in a location with occasional movement between sites. But the construction industry (the right side of the image) is hyperconnected and highly transient. People go everywhere.

transient construction-min

If you're a contractor with hundreds of people working across multiple sites, how do manage contact tracing? Most digital site attendance systems stick to a site-specific view, so you'll have to quite a bit of detective work tracing the person in question, and then a whole lot more work finding out who else may have been exposed across all of your sites. This will likely result in a lot of down time.

So we built a solution for our customers, alongside them. They told us:

  • "Let me to see all of the users who have been on any of my sites in one place."
  • "Let me see all of the sites that a user has been to."
  • "Let me see all people who were on site at the same time as a user (contact trace)."

On Friday 30th October 2020, we formally released a contract tracing solution made just for the construction industry. The People Register allows contractors to view the details of everyone that has signed on to a site. This presents a quick and easy way to trace potential contact with COVID-19.

If you're interested in implementing this solution at your company, get in touch with us today.

 

Keep up with SignOnSite

Ready to ditch the paperwork?

Know what you’ll pay

Let us provide you with a custom quote by answering a few simple questions.

Download our info pack

Learn more about how SignOnSite can help your business achieve its safety goals.

Get the mobile app

Download SignOnSite for iOS and Android.