TE C H N OLOG Y T R EN D S | By Jessica Lombardo
Mobile Technology Improves Jobsite Productivity
HeadLight
As the industry evolves to do more work with fewer resources, technology is adapting to help achieve better results in less time. A project inspector at a state DOT utilizes HeadLight as part of the inspection process.
T
he construction industry has historically been slow to adopt technology. While this may have been acceptable in the past, the increasing amount of challenges infrastructure projects are facing requires the use of advanced technologies to ensure both project accuracy and jobsite efficiency. Si Katara, president and cofounder of HeadLight, started his company recognizing the challenges the industry faces. He and his team spent months meeting with construction business owners, DOTs and municipalities to look at what their existing processes were and what they needed to do to deliver projects. The team found that many existing processes were still predominantly paper based. “We really wanted to understand what the business challenges were so we spent six months in the field,” Katara says. “Before we wrote a line of code
or designed a single interface, we really wanted to learn what was the process and the communications up the stack — from inspectors to chiefs to project engineers to management — to complete the project delivery. And we saw just an incredible opportunity to apply technology to help solve that problem.” From their research, the team developed HeadLight, a photobased inspection technology that can be used on projects to quickly and efficiently capture project data. This encourages greater collaboration between stakeholders, quickly resolves problem areas, minimizes disputes, and ultimately ensures successful, ontime project completion.
HOW IT WORKS The majority of information collection on construction projects is still done using a notebook. The notes are then hand entered into a computer at
40 EQUIPMEN T TODAY | October 2021
the end of the day in a time-consuming and inefficient process. “Paper-based operations are not only inefficient, but it’s almost impossible to integrate and share all that information in a timely manner,” Katara states. “HeadLight flips this form-based mentality on its head, allowing field staff to capture events as they occur naturally, not as the paper-based form is laid out.” According to Katara, what comes from this method of data entry is close to a Facebook feed for your project, with photos being a core pillar of the technology. These photos are used to help project stakeholders communicate quickly and with all of the information wrapped in the context of the project. “You get automatic location information, automatic time stamping and you can tie all that information directly to contractrelevant items,” Katara explains. “This also allows the information
that’s collected in real time on a project to be used for many different purposes. That information is now available for state DOTs or public owners so they can share it directly with contractors for real-time issue resolution and things can get fixed much more quickly.” The time savings can add up fairly quickly and in monetizable ways. “With HeadLight, they can literally push a button and be done and go home after they’ve been collecting information throughout the day, which saves them almost an hour and a half of extra time each day as opposed to hand entering the information. So, there’s a big administrative savings there,” Katara points out. “On the flip side, with the owners using it, they can share the information the state is collecting and allow contractors to see it in real time, as well,” he
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continues. “As a result, there’s no extra work for the contractor. They get access to a whole rich set of information and they know what the state is seeing and what they are noting as items that need to be addressed. And what it does is it basically creates a second set of eyes for the contractor through the state’s eyes.”
IMMEDIATE IMPACT The technology was recently put to the test by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD). The state’s research department found that
