SafeGuard, a safety-tech company that specializes in predicting and preventing accidents in the construction industry through machine learning, has announced an $8 million Series A funding round. The investment round was led by hi-tech investors Ron Zuckerman and Hillel Kobrinsky, with real estate investors Ronen Peled, Yehuda Rachamim, Zemach Hammerman, and Wall Street investor Jeffrey Schoenfeld also participating.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, three workers die every day while on the job, and a worker is injured every three minutes. Because 90% of all construction accidents are due to human error, fatal and non-fatal injuries continue to rise despite advances in equipment, safety apps and training. Other jobs also carry disproportionate risk. Warehousing, for example, accounts for almost 8% of the 2.8 million non-fatal workplace injuries and illnesses reported by private industry employers.
Dangerous workplaces
“Construction shouldn’t be the most dangerous job in America,” said Safeguard CEO and founder Izhak Paz. “Unfortunately, our field is focused on digitizing compliance rather than innovating decision-support tools, but the reality is that compliance does not assure safety. Only an end-to-end solution that removes the human factor from the equation can prevent accidents and construction site shutdowns, the same is true for industries like manufacturing, maritime or agriculture that suffer from similar issues.”
SafeGuard uses an end-to-end decision-making solution that collects data from various sources, such as cameras, sensors, drones, statistical analysis, open data and big data to automate on-site decision-making. The platform’s algorithms identify on-site human-error patterns and use artificial intelligence to predict the probability of an accident occurring. The predictive data is then converted into proactive measures that enforce good decision-making beforehand.
SafeGuard’s technology has been implemented by a leading international construction firm, reducing the number of fatal accidents from 10 from 2016-2019 to just one over the last three years. The company’s expansion to multiple industries aims to reduce legal liability and protect companies’ reputations.
“Accidents lead to huge monetary and resource losses at a corporate level, from project delays to long-term wage loss, legal costs, admin expenses, and equipment damage,” said lead investor Hillel Kobrinsky. “SafeGuard’s automated decision-support platform gives project managers peace of mind by providing them with a powerful tool to protect on-site workers from human errors, thereby preventing accidents in real-time.”