These ‘smart badges’ will be provided to 36,000 construction workers, and wireless tags for up to 3,000 vehicles
The Red Sea Development Company (TRSDC), the developer behind the world’s most ambitious regenerative tourism project, The Red Sea Project, has awarded a contract to national IoT service provider, MachinesTalk, for the provision of smart wearable technology and wireless tagging solutions for its construction workforce and fleet of vehicles at its site on the west coast of Saudi Arabia.
MachinesTalk will be tasked with deploying a LoRaWAN network to cover more than 3,500km2., implementing an IoT platform, and providing smart badges for up to 36,000 construction workers, and wireless tags for up to 3,000 vehicles.
Commenting on this, CEO of TRSDC, John Pagano said: “Delivering a project of this scale against an ambitious timeline while aiming to meet and exceed the highest international standards for health, safety and sustainability, requires innovative solutions.”
“Our partnership with MachinesTalk will play an important role in ensuring the welfare of our workers, given their proven track record providing smart construction technology and alignment with our business goals.”
On his part, the CEO of MachinesTalk, Nawaaf Alshalani said: “We are honored to have won this contract with The Red Sea Development Company. It shows real forward thinking and care for employees when a company wants to implement these solutions at such scale. Using IoT technologies will keep the workforce safer and support secure and more efficient operations.”
The new technology aims to address four key considerations for TRSDC’s core construction site area of 3,500km2: site security, worker safety, access control, and process efficiency.
“We asked ourselves how we could enhance security on our site and enable an efficient construction process at the same time, while considering upwards of 36,000 workers across 3,500 km2,” said Ian Williamson, TRSDC’s Chief Projects Delivery Officer.
“How could we ensure worker safety in case of health emergencies or prevent workers getting lost in remote locations in the desert or on islands? How could we control access and track the 3,000 vehicles of multiple contractors across the construction site, delivering materials, tools and transporting employees?”
MachinesTalk’s smart badges and tags allow TRSDC to identify workers and vehicles and secure the construction area against unauthorized individual and vehicle access. Individual access rights will be granted based on role, responsibility, category and group of workers. In addition, the possibility of identifying vehicles remotely, geo-fencing perimeters and setting up alerts based on worker and vehicle access breaches will further enhance security.
A panic button will enable workers in distress to send an SOS signal back to TRSDC’s security and emergency response centre, allowing response teams to be sent directly to the location of the worker without losing potentially life-saving time.
From a process efficiency perspective, all tagged vehicles will have an estimated time of arrival (ETA) to ensure that there are no delays between required tasks. In addition, alerts will be triggered for idle workers or vehicles to enable improved worker supervision.
The technology MachinesTalk provides will apply to all TRSDC’s contractors, who will be able to register their workers and vehicles and receive accreditation for them as required. Real-time and map-based remote tracking of workers and vehicles with heatmaps and counts will allow for more effective resource allocation across locations within TRSDC’s construction area.
Given the criticality of the solution and the ranging temperatures experienced on-site, the smart badge and tag’s operability will be actively monitored with exchanges of devices with low battery and remote deactivation in cases of loss or misappropriation.
