5 Ways How AI Can Help Construction Companies to Enhance ESG Scoring?

The COVID-19 pandemic has geared up the pace for companies taking action on corporate sustainability issues with special emphasis on environmental sustainability, workforce safety and transparent governance. 2021 has emerged as a year with ESG investing as the buzz word for both investors and investee all across the world. The wave of ESG investing has also marked its impact on the construction industry with companies trying to enhance the ESG scoring.

Environmental, Social and Governance popularly known as ESG is collection of efforts undertaken by companies towards bringing sustainable and social impact to their businesses along with financial gains. Companies across the world have thus taken ESG as a score to measures the overall progress of their business.

However, construction being a cumbersome industry, it takes enormous efforts to ensure good ESG preposition but artificial intelligence has a great scope in this aspect.

Wondering how?

Construction sites are huge, complex and tedious to manage. Traditional site management often uses a lot of paper-based work flow. However, the increasing attention of the world towards minimum paper usage to promote green workflow has placed the extensive paper-based work flow of construction projects under question!

In this regards, viAct’s AI based construction site monitoring modules are best fit to digitalize construction site monitoring and progress tracking without use of a single sheet of paper. The AI powered cameras are smart enough to capture every tiniest detail of the workplace and the cloud platform stores the details for future assessments and planning. These records can be visualized digitally by an on-site manger and can also be accessed by any remote authority. The user-friendly interphase of viAct’s dashboard gives an instant view of various records allowing any non-technical person to visualize, monitor and efficiently plan future actions without any paper work.

The environmental criteria of ESG emphasize strictly on shifting the usage of energy from non-renewable sources to green renewable source. A significant part of ESG scoring covers this criterion. However, the traditional construction industry is dependent on non-renewable power sources adding burden to the limited environmental resources. viAct’s hardware collection viMOV is a tailor-made solution for this. viMOV which is 1st mobile AI Monitoring Solution for construction sites uses rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery that enables direct power supply for the AI based surveillance system in absence of electricity even in critical construction site. Moreover, the light weight algorithm of the viAct’s solution ensures the usage of even solar power to drive the entire monitoring system.

In terms of bringing both social and environmental sustainability, dumping of waste illegally in the construction sites is a very common issue encountered by construction site mangers. People tend to dump loads of daily waste near the construction sites making the site extremely nasty to work for the workforce along with environmental havocs. Therefore, adding up to additional managerial efforts in keeping a check on such activities. This calls for a smart technology to help mangers in keeping a watch on illegal dumping in and around the site. In this connection, viAct provides such a solution through its illegal dumping detection module which can not only monitor any dumping activity but it also is capable enough to detect vehicle license through its registration plate if waste is dumped by vehicles.

Apart from this, management of Construction & Demolition waste (C&D waste) is another major cause of concern because of its hazardous nature. This remains as a challenge for construction industries in attaining a good ESG score. The European Waste Catalogue (EWC) bifurcates the C&D waste into disposable, salvageable and recyclable and thus encourages on-site classification of the waste. viAct’s smart construction waste classification module has been designed to mitigate this issue. The solution is trained in a way to detect any unexpected construction waste dumped in wrong waste container and instant alert is sent for immediate action. This helps in onsite waste segregation helping to attain a good ESG score.

The second criteria for ESG scoring i.e. the social criterion majorly focus on workforce harmony which emphasizes on workforce safety and protection. Construction industry which is known for its fatal accidents always finds it challenging to attain a high ESG preposition at this front. Manual monitoring is often seen to be insufficient in preventing accidents and thus viAct’s AI safety modules is a made-to-order option for any construction site to mitigate this issue. viAct’s exclusive hardware collection viz. viMAC is a powerful, reliable and effective system to boost safety of construction workers from any unprecedented event. It powers already existing IP cameras by a powerful AI processor to monitor the complete construction site keeping zero blind spot. viMAC’s smart modules like shackle missing detections, outrigger missing detection, lifting zone alert, safety helmet detection, worker fighting detection through its audio-visual alert system helps in tracking non-compliances that leads to severe accidents. Moreover, many of its modules like free fall detection, worker motion detection, smoke fire detection modules help the site manger to take immediate action to reduce the impact of unprecedented events. Thus, the holistic surveillance by viMAC brings a happy and safe environment for workforce to work thereby increasing ESG scores in construction industry.

The last but a significant pillar of ESG is Governance which can be elaborated as corporate governance. Being a cumbersome business having numerous safety non-compliances; governance in construction industry is always rated the lowest. The major issue for most of the stakeholders in governing any construction project is the lack of transparent information flow from site mangers to contractors and from contractors to higher authorities. viAct’s smart AI based monitoring system is all that’s needed to prevent this issue and enhance governance in construction sites. All modules of viAct are exclusively linked to the cloud facility that helps in giving instant alerts to remote stakeholders in case of any non-compliance through email, SMS or any other messaging app. Moreover, as mentioned earlier the viAct’s smart dashboard helps in giving an instant look on trends of accidents, non-compliances as well as progress of the construction site even without the physical presence. Thus, viAct brings all stakeholders at a single platform for dissemination of information at a single go to provide better governance and management of construction projects.

Thus, viAct helps construction companies to attain a higher ESG preposition by strengthening all aspects of ESG scoring and to make the traditional incommodious construction business an environmentally sustainable, socially accountable and digitally smarter one.

Now what? Just book a free consultation with viAct’s AI expert in order to understand how viMAC & viMOV can help you attain a good ESG score along with enhancing safety & productivity of your construction site. Book Here bit.ly/viacttrial