Insights

Construction live video surveillance: the benefits and use cases

May 25, 2023

Construction sites can be dangerous, even for trained professionals working in daylight. At night, for unauthorized visitors unfamiliar with the site, they can be deadly. Construction live video surveillance enhances all your other security measures to limit access to your sites and keep everyone allowed to be there safe and on task.

See how Solink improves the security level of your business with live video surveillance.

Live video surveillance is a way to monitor your business remotely in real time. Remote monitoring uses a combination of commercial security cameras and advanced video analytics to keep an eye on your construction sites. There are many benefits to using this technology, including enhanced security, lower operational costs, improved efficiency, and better relationships with law enforcement.

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Indeed, while the improved security alone justifies the price of live video surveillance for your construction sites, the benefits go well beyond just better security.

10 live video surveillance benefits

As mentioned above, being able to monitor your business in real time has both security and non-security benefits. Here are 10 benefits of live video surveillance:

  • Identify retraining needs
  • Respond to issues in real time
  • Remote monitoring
  • Virtual guarding
  • Better asset protection/loss prevention
  • Enhanced access control
  • Reduced labor expenses and hiring needs
  • Better security
  • Alarm verification
  • Safer construction sites

Note that these benefits often open up great synergies. For example, enhanced access control can directly improve your loss prevention strategy.

To see all the ways Solink can help your business, book a demo today.

Identify retraining needs

Employees often find themselves in need of retraining. This can be due to their lack of experience or mistakes made during initial training. Whether malicious or because of training shortcomings, the results are the same for the business: reduced profitability from lost productivity.

The following are two of the common retraining needs that often appear on construction sites:

  • Time theft: Time theft is when employees are being paid to work but are doing something else instead. This can be simple productivity issues such as employees using their mobile phones during work hours. However, it can also be more serious, for example coworkers manipulating the punch clock to bill overtime hours when they are already at home (sometimes called “buddy punching”) or even sub-contractors billing for work but not showing up. This leads to higher labor costs, reducing the profitability of every project.
  • Safety lapses due to short cuts: Employees might feel pressure to increase their productivity by cutting corners. To someone unfamiliar with the reasons behind standard operating procedures (SOPs), they can feel like the “slow way” of doing something. However, the SOPs are there for a reason, and employees skipping steps could lead to liability risks. It could also cause quality problems.

Volunteers of America-Michigan has identified several retraining issues using the Solink platform. Live video surveillance has helped them find instances of employees not doing what they are supposed to without ever needing to step foot in the affected stores.

Volunteers of america michigan success story.

Respond to issues in real time

Motion alerts notify you any time something moves in your regions of interest. Whether you are on site or at home, if someone is detected where they shouldn’t be, you are notified. Then you can open up the live video feed on your mobile device to see what is happening.

If it’s an employee working late, you can safely dismiss the alert. However, if there is suspicious activity, you can notify law enforcement of the potential threat.

Remote monitoring

Remote video monitoring gives you the ability to audit your projects for company policy compliance without visiting in person. For busy companies working on dozens or hundreds of projects, it’s not always possible to be on site as much as you’d like.

Especially those projects where everything seems to not go your way, the ability to view in real time what is happening remotely means you can keep a close watch on things. For example, you can make sure work starts on time in the morning, deliveries are being made, and progress is occurring on schedule using your laptop or mobile device.

Virtual guarding

Virtual guarding is the use of live video surveillance equipment to replace on-site security guards or enhance their ability to patrol large spaces. In either case, using your security system to replace live guards can save a lot of money.

In addition, surveillance cameras never sleep, cannot be intimidated, provide objective evidence when an incident occurs, and can monitor your entire construction site at once. All of these added benefits are why many project managers are using remote guards to protect their build sites.

Virtual guarding is particularly effective for construction live video surveillance. Outdoor builds do not always have natural barriers to entry, leaving them at higher risk of theft or vandalism. It’s also not always possible or practical to lock up valuable equipment at night. Using virtual guards means a single person can monitor all of your builds simultaneously.

Better asset protection/loss prevention

Theft comes in many forms. Employees could steal materials and tools from you or each other. Vendors might use fraudulent shipping manifests to short change you. Organized nighttime thieves could drive away with an entire truckload of materials.

Whichever type of theft event you experience, the result is setbacks for the project, higher expenses, and lengthy processes with the police and insurance company. Construction live video surveillance creates a strong deterrent to criminal activity. When theft does occur, you can quickly find the evidence, save multiple video angles, and share it with law enforcement, the insurance company, and any other stakeholders by email. This leads to better resolutions.

Enhanced access control

Access control systems are an important part of construction site security. However, there is always the risk that a fob is stolen or employees share codes. Integrating access control with video surveillance improves the security of your construction sites.

Solink now integrates with Brivo to improve the value of access control systems by pairing entries with video.

brivo-pass-entrance

Reduced labor expenses and hiring needs

Live video surveillance can reduce labor expenses in several ways. Most directly, the virtual guarding function can replace live 24/7 on-site security guards. However, even when a full-time salary isn’t being removed from the books, video surveillance systems can be used to improve productivity.

Monitoring employee productivity, investigating overtime requests, and confirming materials are delivered on time can all help reduce the cost of labor while helping to get projects completed on time.

Better security

Solink is a complete video management system (VMS). With all of the included tools, you can now search for theft or other security incidents, save the videos, organize all the evidence gathered for an event, and share it internally and with law enforcement in one platform.

Solink Video Alarms Monitoring Service is another way to better protect your business with live video surveillance. Unlike traditional panel alarms, video alarms can monitor entire areas of your business for improved detection. You can also turn them on and off one zone at a time, meaning your store can be open for business while the loading dock is secured.

In a recent independent comparison of Solink Video Alarms and traditional panel alarms, video alarms led to multiple arrests while traditional alarms led to zero apprehensions.

To see all the ways Solink can help your business, book a demo today.

Alarm verification

Alarm verification gives trained professionals the ability to review in real time what is happening on a site before deciding whether an emergency response is warranted. Then, when law enforcement is required, the video feed is shared with the dispatcher to ensure prompt and appropriate response.

However, the value of alarm verification goes beyond better security. Verified alarms also save you money. Many police forces no longer respond to unverified alarms, and where they do false alarm fines are increasing.

In the same head-to-head comparison mentioned above, Solink Video Alarms led to a 100% decrease in false alarm fines across multiple restaurant locations.

Safer construction sites

Construction sites are dangerous, especially at night when proper lighting is not available to uncover all the hidden hazards. Unfortunately, vandals, thieves, and others looking to commit crimes sneak into construction sites at night.

Despite their bad intentions, the liability for any injuries often still falls on the company operating the site. Construction sites then face the cost of replacing stolen and damaged equipment as well as the liability of any injuries and the potential mounting costs of work stoppages.

Live video surveillance can keep these sites secured with video alarms. Since many construction sites aren’t protected by a roof and four walls, traditional panel alarms can’t keep people out. With video alarms, the operators of construction sites have real-time access to motion alerts. They can then confirm whether someone has trespassed on their work site and request police dispatch when necessary.

construction-security-camera

Solink provides a customizable cloud-first video analytics platform. Most construction companies install live video surveillance to increase the security of their sites. However, the benefits go way beyond security.

Productivity and training, health and safety, cleanliness, and loss prevention, can all be monitored with construction live video surveillance. That leads to a clear return on investment.

To see how Solink can help you monitor all of your construction sites, sign up for a demo today.

To see all the ways Solink can help your business, book a demo today.

Tim Ware headshot

Timothy Ware |

Timothy Ware is Solink’s Content Manager. He brings over ten years of writing and editing experience to the job. When he isn’t writing about security, loss prevention, and asset protection, he’s enjoying his newest board game. His work has appeared on many B2B SaaS websites including Baremetrics, Security Today, TeamPassword, Cova, and SignTime.