How this biometrics leader addressed COVID-19 by partnering with their customers

We’re a market leader in workforce management solutions specifically for the construction industry. The business has been around since 2010. So for over ten years now. Our aim is to support the digital transformation of the construction industry, through technology-enabled solutions that essentially try to support efficiency, safety and compliance

On-site the business has grown significantly, especially over the last sort of five or six years. Predominantly, the reason behind that is the fact that we work collaboratively with our customers.

Everything that we do is very bespoke. So we design and manufacturer our own hardware and software in-house and the solutions that address workforce productivity challenges that some of our customers may well be facing. And the business has gone on quite a journey in the last couple of years in terms of the development of that data.

COVID-19 is one of the biggest challenges that not just construction sites but all businesses have faced for a very long time. We’ve found it quite eye-opening. We’ve also spent a long time and also a lot of money in terms of research and development.

So since the onset of COVID, naturally, given the products that we offer our customers, a lot of our customers came to us to say, you know, what can we do?

Obviously, there was also in the early days, a lot of conflicting guidance on perhaps how construction sites and operatives should be operating. I’m sure you remember the debate early on whether or not construction should show. And that also made national news. So we’ve been working extremely proactively to respond sort of on behalf of what we call our partners in construction, which is essentially our customers.

We are fortunate enough to have an in house research and development team both on the hardware and software functionalities that we provide. And we’ve been researching, testing developing a whole new range of products to respond to the challenges of COVID-19 and to help our customers keep their sites running safely and effectively.

Our COVID response solutions range is a combination of practical and technical solutions and systems. So we’ve had things like mandatory hand sanitization systems, which is linked to the access control systems to enforce that before access to science granted, facial detection not just as detection of faces opposed to facial recognition.

So facial detection and temperature measurement systems. Also, a range of digital systems to help manage inductions training processes and knocks off an off-site. Manage that off-site effectively. So digitising what previously may have been a fairly interactive and paper-based process, which obviously, of course, nowadays has that inherent risk of transmission and our approaches of business.

You know, pre-COVID, I suppose as well as always there has been no one size fits all. One size fits all. solution. So we work closely with our customers to understand their challenges, understand their issues and their problems. We’ve despite the fact that they’re all construction companies, and they all operate in the same industry, they are vastly different challenges that they face. And we try to work with them to understand their challenges, and then develop alongside with their input, and then bring to market flexible solutions and also alternative technology. So, yeah, definitely been a busy few months for us from a research and development point of view. But it’s been it’s certainly been, what I would say is a successful one.