Saudi startup’s smart helmets upping safety on building sites

WakeCap

• Saudi sites initially cautious
• More than 100,000 in use
• ‘Untapped’ market in US

When Hassan AlBalawi first proposed a smart helmet that would track all employee movements on building sites, construction companies could not see the point. 

“We were focusing on this problem of how to get technology into the construction field, measuring the drowsiness of construction workers. But it turned out the construction companies didn’t know or care,” said the Saudi entrepreneur, who obtained his doctorate in electronic engineering in the United States.  

When the companies finally agreed to early trials it was with conditions.

“Number one, you’re not allowed to talk to the workers. The solution needs to be intuitive and easy to use, because training costs money,” he said.

“Number two, don’t ask for electricity and don’t ask for internet on the site. We don’t have them.”  

But it was when his invention began to pique the interest of developers in Saudi Arabia such as Aramco, Emaar and Qiddiya, that things began to move. Seeing a means to reduce accidents and better manage contractors, companies started to insist on the helmets. 

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Since then, his headware, equipped with a range of sensors, has become such a success – more than 400,000 have been distributed to construction companies and developers and more than 100,000 workers use them – that one wonders why nobody thought of it before. 

Phillip Higgins, director of sales lead management at construction analysts Ventures Onsite, said tracking technology is taking off in the regional market, either via the smart helmet or tags that perform a similar function. 

Supplied

“They’re increasingly being mandated on construction sites,” he said, citing the twin aims of safety and efficiency. “The data they deliver is impartial and accurate, something that’s also beneficial when it comes to elements such as attendance and knowing when a site needs resources allocated differently.” 

WakeCap, AlBalawi’s company, said revenue is set to treble this year, with the number of employees rising from 65 to 140. Patented in the US, the helmet is manufactured via factories in Saudi Arabia but the company has a team in China working on plans to localise all the electronics, too. 

Co-founded with Indian national Ishita Kochhar, the startup began with seed funding from accelerators HAX and Aramco’s Wa’ed Ventures fund. The company is hoping to raise its Series A round by the end of 2024. 

AlBalawi said that when he was first developing the idea he was advised by a senior figure in US construction giant Bechtel to test the waters first in the Gulf where the sector suffers myriad inefficiencies and safety gaps and there are fewer privacy concerns. 

Contractors often have no idea how many workers are on site at one time and workers are frequently unsupervised. 

Monitoring safety

When accidents occur, the helmet can establish if there are more or fewer workers than scheduled on site at any given time and where the supervisor was. The device also functions as a heat sensor as workers labour under the Gulf sun.  

“If, God forbid, something happened on the site, they can play it back. What happened, was it unsupervised?” he says, citing its use for developers and insurers in establishing liability. 

AlBalawi said of one incident: “When a fatality happened on the site, he was wearing a WakeCap at the time so we could identify that he was on site that day and the whole narrative hung on that piece of information.

“But there is a record that the person was sick that day and he was not supposed to be onsite. But guess why? Because of overtime. He’s left his family [to work abroad], he’s not gonna skip a day because he is sick… When people are sick, they tend to go to the site.” 

Growth market

Saudi Arabia has been described by one real estate consultancy as the biggest construction site in the world, as the kingdom pushes ahead with a vast programme of residential, tourism and infrastructure projects that have been valued at more than $1.25 trillion. 

“The focus is all on Saudi Arabia because of all the construction we see. The UAE, the US, Europe are unexpected wins,” AlBalawi said, adding that the helmet is tailored for his growing US customer base without the GPS function. 

“There’s tons of opportunity to build on top of what we have so far, the market is untapped. But we need more data. With the 100 million hours we have, we have some insight into what makes a site productive, what makes a site more safe.”