Buildings 2.0 Library
Conversations on the future of the built environment
81 episodes of the Buildings 2.0 podcast, each bound as a short book: the ideas, the numbers and the lines worth keeping.
Season 1, Episode 35 /Nov 17, 2024
Leveraging technology for enhanced construction safety
Dana Kfir, Otoos
Nov 17, 2024 /Construction & Delivery
Leveraging technology for enhanced construction safety
Dana Kfir of Otoos argues that construction still leads in fatal incidents despite new technology. Safety improves, she says, only when leadership owns it, rollout happens in the field, and data surfaces open risks.
Dana Kfir, Director, Customer Success & Operations, Otoos
In this conversation
How Dana went from a civil engineering scholarship she almost did not want to managing projects as a young officer in the Israeli Defense Force, often leading teams older than she was.
Her master's research on safety by design, which found designers and builders touring a 3D model largely indifferent to the risks their details created for workers.
Why she says safety has to be owned by leadership, and that companies treating it as a compliance box tend to perform worse.
How her team rolls out software in the field, sitting in foreman meetings and getting managers to endorse and enforce it, because tutorials alone fail.
The metrics she tracks on a job site: compliance, on-time inspections, more observations closed on time, and risk categories like fall protection that keep coming back.
What she would tell an owner planning a large renovation, from defining safety success with everyone at one table to replacing binders with accessible data.
Construction continues to lead the charts negatively for the number of fatal incidents. It's not just a US problem.
Dana Kfir
Chapters
From the Army to construction tech
Dana's path from project manager in the IDF to heavy civil work in New Jersey and a port in Georgia, then into construction technology.
Safety starts in design
What her research found about designers and worker risk, and why builders should join the conversation during design.
Where safety stands today
Why fatal incidents remain stubbornly high despite new technology, and why leadership has to own safety.
By the numbers
US construction fatalities in 2023, the most of any private industry and about one in five workplace deaths
Dana says construction still leads the charts for fatal incidents. The 2023 federal count puts construction first among private industries.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics data, via Construction Dive (2024) ↗Rolling out tech in the field
Why implementation has to happen on site and bottom up, with managers backing it.
Data, metrics and AI cameras
How Otoos modules surface open risks, which KPIs matter across sites, and how AI camera models spot missing PPE or leading edge exposure.
Advice for owners and a younger self
How an owner should set the safety tone before a renovation, and why she would tell her younger self she chose the right field.
If management and leadership are not the biggest advocates, and they're not in it, it won't be prioritized and it won't happen.
Dana Kfir
Takeaways
Her master's research found designers largely indifferent to the risks their details create for workers, so builders should join during design.
Safety has to come from management; if leaders treat it as a compliance box, performance suffers.
Tutorials alone fail on site; implementation has to happen in foreman meetings with managers endorsing and enforcing use.
Useful metrics include site compliance, on-time inspections, rising observation reports closed on time, and repeat risk categories like fall protection.
Otoos uses AI camera models to spot missing PPE or workers near a leading edge and feed that into real-time decisions.
If you think you're going to satisfy this with a bunch of tutorials and a bunch of self-service resources, it's just not going to work.
Dana Kfir