Tel Aviv — April 17th, 2023 — SafeGuard, a company that uses machine learning to predict worksite accidents in the construction industry, today announced an $8 million Series A funding round led by hi-tech investors Ron Zuckerman and Hillel Kobrinsky.
An additional cadre of real estate investors, including Ronen Peled, Yehuda Rachamim, Zemach Hammerman and Wall Street investor Jeffrey Schoenfeld, are also participating in the round. SafeGuard is also announcing the creation of Otoos, a daughter company that will focus exclusively on the construction industry in the US. Last, SafeGuard will be expanding the use of its end-to-end decision-making solution beyond construction to cover compliance, safety, and everything in between to other industries in dire need of better safety technology.
Jobsite injuries and deaths plague the construction industry. In the US alone, three workers die every day, and every three minutes, a worker gets injured. 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.
SafeGuard’s technology prevents accidents in real time with its automated decision-making platform. SafeGuard is the only platform that collects data simultaneously from multiple sources such as cameras, sensors, drones, statistic analysis, open data and big data to automate on-site decision-making. The algorithms identify on-site human error patterns and use AI to predict the probability of an accident occurring. The predictive data is then converted into proactive measures that enforce good decision-making beforehand. For example, SafeGuard machine learning capabilities can identify and stop a construction worker in real time on the verge of making a mistake, preventing an accident by locking the worker out of the hazardous area. The same technology can be utilized in other industries as it aims to solve accidents at the root.
“Construction shouldn’t be the most dangerous job in America. Unfortunately, our field is focused on digitizing compliance rather than innovating decision-support tools, but the reality is that compliance does not assure safety,” said Izhak Paz, CEO and founder of SafeGuard. “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,” Paz added.
By implementing SafeGuard’s solution, a leading international construction firm lowered the number of fatal accidents from ten over a three-year period between 2016-2019 to just one over the last three years. With SafeGuard, hazardous patterns disappeared, and work-related accidents only occurred due to random chance. Moreover, indirect costs were reduced and “Stop Work Orders” were easily appealed. SafeGuard’s expansion to multiple industries allows all kinds of companies to reduce legal liability and protect the company’s reputation.
“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,” Kobrinsky concluded.
SafeGuard is an international Safety-Tech company, reducing accidents in multiple industries like construction, ports and more. Since its launch in 2016, SafeGuard’s game-changing automated decision-support platform has saved over 2,745 lives. With a long track record of dramatic declines in accidents, SafeGuard’s innovative end-to-end solution is bound to impact insurance fees as well.
