Who is watching when the load swings over somebody?
On a site, data isn’t there to keep watch. It’s there so everyone goes home.
We show eleven cameras here: nine that raise an alert when a risky situation is under way and two that alert nobody, they just measure. And first of all, because it’s the first thing anybody thinks of on hearing “cameras” and “jobsite”: this isn’t about keeping watch on the workers. IRIS detects that a person is not wearing a hard hat; it does not detect who that person is.
Without IRIS this is just a big jobsite.
AI-generated image
What’s at stake on a jobsite
On a jobsite nobody’s watching: everybody is working. The crane operator is watching his load, the banksman is watching his truck, the site crew lead is up on floor five and the safety coordinator is on another site this morning. The maneuver that swings over two people lasts eight seconds and, from outside, nobody sees it. Whoever walks in through the truck gate without a hard hat is ten steps from the work face. None of that reaches the daily report, because nearly always nothing happens.
IRIS watches for you. It analyzes every camera the site already has, all at once, and only interrupts when a rule your own team set is met: a suspended load with somebody underneath, a person without a hard hat in the plant area, somebody walking in where the trucks come in, a worker on their own where the procedure calls for two. The alert arrives with the camera, the time and the video. And it arrives while it’s happening, to whoever can call a stop on the radio.
And where there’s nothing to alert about, IRIS measures. How many people are inside each work area right now — the first thing anybody asks the day you have to evacuate. And how congested the gate is: how many trucks and how many people meet at the same entrance, and at what time of day it always happens. That isn’t set up by talking, it’s set up by drawing: a line can’t be described in a sentence, it has to be traced on the image. That’s why the number comes out the same way every day and can be audited. And for people counting our system is approved by the Centro Español de Metrología — Spain’s national metrology institute: the figure you see has been verified by a third party, not by us. Worth putting precisely: that approval covers people counting, not the whole product. It’s a Spanish approval. What crosses over isn’t the seal, it’s the method: the same line, in the same place, every day.
And two things said out loud, because they’re the first ones anybody thinks of on hearing “cameras” and “jobsite.” First: this isn’t about keeping watch on the workers. IRIS does not identify anyone. It detects that a person is not wearing a hard hat; it does not detect who that person is. It does not recognize faces, does not compare them against any database, is not there to clock people in, is not there to discipline a particular worker and does not replace the site’s access control. What it sees is “a person without a hard hat in the plant area,” where they’re and since when. Second: IRIS doesn’t stop the crane. It touches no machine and it doesn’t replace the safety officer on site, the banksman or the site safety plan. It flags a risky situation while it’s happening, so that whoever is directing the maneuver can stop it.
The real scale
Eleven cameras here. A site that in three months will look nothing like this one.
This demo shows eleven cameras because eleven fit on a screen. A jobsite doesn’t fit. And here the axis isn’t the miles of a road or the passengers of a station: it’s the phases. Where there’s an open pit today there’ll be a floor slab in a few months; where the trucks come in today there’ll be a ramp; what’s fenced off today is the work face tomorrow. The cameras move, the zones get redrawn and the rules change with them: that’s why a new rule has to be something you write in a while, not something you order in. And a contractor doesn’t have one site: it has dozens at once, each in a different phase, and very few people answer for safety across all of them. That’s the problem IRIS solves: it analyzes however many cameras there are, on every site, for every hour there are people inside, and only interrupts when a rule is met.
Examples
These eleven are just examples.
Nine raise an alert when a risky situation is under way and two alert nobody: they only measure. They come in four groups, ordered by type of risk and not by type of data: the kit that isn’t being worn, machines and loads, the site and its perimeter, and measuring the site. They aren’t the eleven things IRIS can do on a site; they’re the ones that fit on a screen. Open any of them and you’ll see the image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
Every simulation
Something has spilled
Tell me if there is liquid or foam outside its place and it is still there two minutes later.
- The sentence
- Where it applies
- What it finds
- The same rule
Now think about your own site
Imagine knowing all of it while the shift is still on site.
The load that swung over two people this morning while the crane operator couldn’t see them. The person who came in at ten past seven through the truck gate, no hard hat, without going by the site office. The four who stood less than a step from the forklift in the laydown area. The one who climbed the fence on Sunday afternoon. The slurry pit that’s been rising for three days. The one who spent half an hour alone in the basement, where the procedure calls for two. And the twelve who were inside zone two when the site manager thought there were four.
All of that is happening in front of cameras the site already has up. And right now nobody knows: the crew lead is on floor five, the safety coordinator is on another site and the report gets written at the end of the shift, when nothing can be done about it. IRIS watches all those cameras at once and says it while it’s happening, to whoever can stop the maneuver. In front of cameras that already exist.
What gets asked on the site walk
The ten questions that come up before anyone says yes.
Answered in the first line, straight, and without promising that any system prevents an accident. IRIS raises the alert; the decision stays with a person.
Is this here to keep watch on our workers?
No, this isn’t here to keep watch on your workers, and it needs saying in plain words. IRIS does not identify anyone: it detects that a person is not wearing a hard hat, it does not detect who that person is. It does not recognize faces, does not compare them against any database, does not store who anybody is, is not there to clock people in, is not there to discipline a particular worker and does not replace the site’s access control. What it sees is “a person without a hard hat in the plant area,” where they’re and since when, and that’s what the alert carries. If the site has a works city, this is the first thing you should be able to show them: a system that looks at situations, not at people.
Does IRIS stop the crane when it sees the load pass over somebody?
No, IRIS doesn’t stop the crane. It touches no machine, cuts no control and doesn’t replace the safety officer on site, the banksman or the site safety plan. What it does is flag a risky situation while it’s happening — with the camera, the time and the video — so that whoever is directing the maneuver can stop it. The decision stays with a person, and it has to: on a jobsite, the judgment of whoever is standing there is worth more than any automation. What IRIS adds is what that person is missing, which is a pair of eyes on the spot where, right now, nobody’s looking.
How many alerts are we going to get a day?
You will get the alerts your rule asks for, and tuning that rule is the work of the first month. A system that fires a hundred alerts a day gets turned off within a week; we know that, which is why a rule is never “alert if someone has no hard hat.” It is “alert if someone without a hard hat is inside the plant area, during working hours, for more than a few seconds.” You bound the zone on the image, the hours, how long the situation has to last and who the alert goes to. You start with what really matters on that site, review a week of alerts with your own team and adjust. The goal isn’t to alert about everything: it’s to alert about what makes you look up, and stay quiet about the rest.
Does it work with the cameras we already have on site?
Yes, IRIS works with the cameras you already have on site, including the ones that go up and come down as the job moves on. It connects to the feed and analyzes it as it arrives: what changes isn’t the hardware, it’s what gets understood from the picture. During the project we check camera by camera whether the framing is enough for what you want to see there — a camera put up to watch the laydown area at night may not be able to make out a hard hat on the far side of the plot — and we tell you plainly which ones fall short and which just need moving or lowering. Dust, backlight and rain get checked on the spot, because a jobsite isn’t a hallway with fixed lighting. Adding a new camera is the exception, not the starting point.
The site changes every few weeks. Do we have to redo it all each time?
The site changes every few weeks, and that’s exactly why the system is built so that changing it costs little time. When a camera moves or a zone is redrawn, you mark the zone on the image again and carry on: nothing to order in, nobody to wait for. Alert rules are written in words, so a rule for the phase that is starting is written in a while and tested the same day. That’s the difference between a system that is useful for the first month and one that is still useful at fit-out, when the site looks nothing like it did at setting-out.
Can we know how many people are inside each area?
Yes, you can know how many people are inside each work area, and that’s one of the two cameras on this page that alert nobody: they only measure. You draw the zone on the image and IRIS counts who comes in and who goes out, never saying who they are. It serves the moment — how many people are in the basement right now — and it serves the record, showing at what time everybody ends up in the same place. Asking is for searching and counting is for measuring, and they aren’t done the same way: a line can’t be described in a sentence, it has to be traced. For people counting our system is approved by the Centro Español de Metrología — Spain’s national metrology institute — so the figure you see has been verified by a third party, not by us. Worth putting precisely: that approval covers people counting, not the whole product. That approval is Spanish and it isn’t equivalent to any U.S. certification: we say so up front and not at the end.
Where does the video get processed? Connectivity on site isn’t always good.
The video gets processed wherever you decide, and on a jobsite that matters because connectivity isn’t always there. There are two options and only two. The first is inside the site itself: a unit in the site office analyzes the cameras right there and works with no internet, so if the line drops the system keeps seeing and keeps alerting. The second is our own data center, which is our cloud: the video is processed there and the site only needs a connection. You can start with one and move to the other, and in a contractor with many sites the two live side by side.
What do we tell the works city?
The works city gets told exactly this, and the sooner the better: what the system looks at, what it doesn’t look at and who receives the alerts. IRIS detects situations, not people: it does not recognize faces, does not identify anyone and is not there to discipline a particular worker. What’s processed, how long it is kept and who can see it is configured, and it’s configured with you. And we say it without dressing it up: data protection compliance is signed off by your organization, not by a salesperson of ours; we hand over the tool and the documentation of how it processes data. A site where the workforce’s representatives understand what the system is for works; a site where they don’t, doesn’t.
Is this for one site or for all the company’s sites?
This works for a single site and takes on another meaning across all the company’s sites. On one site, the value is the alert: somebody finds out about the situation while it’s happening. In a contractor with dozens of sites at once, something appears that a single site doesn’t have — comparison with the same yardstick: the same rule, written the same way, applied everywhere. Then you can see which site piles up more risky situations in the same kind of work, which one fixed them after a toolbox talk and which one is worth a visit. Today that is decided by the gut feeling of whoever walks the most sites. With the numbers in front of you it is decided better, and it can be explained.
How much does it cost?
You pay per camera. What it comes to depends on how many cameras get analyzed, what each one is asked to do and where the video is processed. We don’t publish a price list because it wouldn’t be honest: a site with six cameras and two rules and a contractor with twenty sites open aren’t the same project. What you can do is start small: a couple of points on one site, the two or three rules that really matter there, and look at the alerts and the numbers with your own team before deciding anything. Write to us and we’ll go through it with your drawings and your cameras in front of us.
Next step
What does a mall see beyond the visitor count?
12 cases: 4 raise an alert when something happens and 8 only measure. You see each image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
What does an airport see before the line forms?
14 cases: 7 raise an alert when something happens and 7 only measure. You see each image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
And the best part
Behind one camera you can put a person.Behind four thousand you can’t put anyone.
Adding a camera costs little; adding another pair of eyes doesn’t. So the cameras keep growing and the attention doesn’t. IRIS watches all four thousand at once and flags what matters today.
Tell us your problem and we’ll say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
A person answers, the same working day.