We make a camera system for construction sites. Using computer vision, we can identify when and for how long subcontractors show up as well as notify our customers of unwanted behavior on site.
If this were a camera that identified when and for how long a software engineer showed up to the office and notified their employer of "unwanted behavior", how long would it take for that story to end up on the front page of this site and torn apart as invasive and infantilizing?
Software engineers have full-time managers (which are a lot more overhead to pay for but kinda serve that purpose from the client perspective) and are paid well enough and consistently enough to usually only work one job on a given day. Subcontractors sometimes do decide not to show up to your job site because another employer offered them a bonus to do theirs that day instead. The point isn't (only) to humiliate or do a show of power to the workers, it's to counter an economic incentive they have.
That said, for a lot of subcontractor trades, it's so hard to find anyone that I'd worry about the reverse: you get known as "the freaks with the cameras" and no one good bids on your stuff anymore, and then the delivery is even more delayed.
> it's to counter an economic incentive they have.
I think economists would call that a feature and not a bug. It is essentially an auction (something economists LOVE). You could instead take that money that you're spending on surveillance and instead spend it on giving the contractors a bonus to show up to your place instead.
I really don't buy that this would "shame" them into coming to your place first. Everyone already is aware that they don't always show up because you got out bid. You're "solving" the problem the wrong way because you're not addressing the actual problem.
I would imagine shaming doesn't work because I think residential GCs have higher demand for workers than there is supply, but the cameras still solve the problems of making it easier for the GC to react when it happens (and the reaction could be offer to pay that sub more if the project is late or all the other subs have been showing up, realizing the work from the earlier stage wasn't done, and going home, or it could be lengthening their project schedule).
I think if these got to the point of "worker stared at floor for 7 minutes" it would be invasive. If it tracks when a vehicle shows up to site and leaves.
That being said, as someone with digestion issues, tracking bathroom habits is offensive.
In short, yes this is invasive. But much like AI, this type of thing isn't going away, there is just going to be more lawsuits about it in the future.
We don't track port-o-potty use, just if they move. Vandalism is at an all time high on construction sites, tipping port-o-johns is a common teenage prank and the GC needs to know if and when this is happening on sites (and hopefully catch the perpetrators).
I guess I would say that subcontractors are more like hourly workers (who are time tracked meticulously in almost all industries) - not salaried like software engineers, who would deserve the respect and absence of tracking.
I would argue salary employees deserve more tracking since they are given more freedoms.
An hourly worker is paid hourly, and given tasks at a much smaller interval.. often by day and sometimes every few hours.
If you have quarterly goals for salary employees, they probably need more 'tracking' to make sure they are doing what you expect as time goes on.
Not really, in the housing industry, it is generally job bid instead. The contractor taking longer just means they get paid later and don't get as many jobs done.
It's less about tracking how long they're there and more about when they showed up. We do the former because we can, but the GC really wants to know if and when their subs are showing up without having to be on site 24/7 waiting for them.
For example, they can look back through yesterdays events to see that their plumber showed up - and then they'll know they need to go check on the work. The alternative is trying to get the plumber on the phone to figure out if the work had been completed or not - which is difficult in 2023.
There's not a lot of unioned workers in most states for residential construction. But autoworkers, and anything else in manufacturing would be used to the constant monitoring. Commercial construction also typically has fulltime site superintendents, who would do this anyway.
That's an interesting angle. My Father actually, by chance, owns a residential drywall and finishing business. The 'did the plumber show up' factor is key. Though I'm not sure why this couldn't be solved by having the subs of a builder agree to give basic job updates. How do residential customers feel about someone's camera watching their house?
Anything that makes the GC more efficient is going to be a win for the future homeowner. This might get more problematic for remodels, but we primarily work with new home builds.
The GC can often bill it down to the homeowner as antitheft, which reduces time/money to complete the build. The biggest being time. An example, if custom windows are stolen, it could delay a project by months right now.
Hourly means “paid by the hour,” so verifying time on the job is directly related to salary. “Punching in” on remote worksites is the problem being solved with this solution.
Thanks to both the parent for raising the ethical issues in this product and to OP for responding/addressing them. Our industry gets a lot better when we don't shy away from both asking and answering these kinds of questions!
This is great! I built a house and DIY'ed this because our site was 2 hours away from where we were living at the time.
It was clear (our) GC was not used to this because they were constantly telling us that things were happening when they very clearly weren't (thanks to the live video we had from to the site).
We occasionally get the homeowner to buy our product to monitor their GC - the GC always hates this. This in-turn leads us to recommending that the GC (if they're the buyer [most common]) to never share it with the future homeowner as that usually causes the GC to be overburdened by the homeowner.
I applaud you creating your own solution, many GCs can do this, but most can't or don't want to deal with it.
We're working on this solution. Most housing projects have a semi-permanent dumpster, but GC's often have problems with people dumping in their houses' dumpsters, causing them to pay for more refills on their dumpster, which can get expensive.
Since we record motion on site, we typically catch the illegal dumpers, but it's hard to pick out from the many motion events that may occur on a construction site.
Intresting but I dont see something disruptive here, it may work in some specific places but in other countries like Mexico (where I live), someone could easily destroy or damage it, also the connectivity issue in rural areas (where a lot of the building market is interested) should be an issue... maybe it has a business niche but I cant see the mass adoption and innovation here
I'm wondering what the benefit is here. Pretty much every job site has a pole with security cameras installed already. What does this do that wouldn't be done with building an integration for your analytics for the major VMS out there?
How does knowing someone is on site lead to an increase in anything production wise? All they'd have to do is wander around and look busy. Some people are willing to do this over real work despite it being a task in itself.
Subcontractors are businesses, if they're paying people to wander around on site, they have big problems.
It's more about the fact that GCs struggle to get accurate schedules around when their subs will show up, the subs are in too high of a demand (think plumbers, electricians, framers). So they ask the subs to come out and complete a job and the sub responds with, "we'll be there sometime next week." Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don't. GCs need to know when and if they are showing up.
Many years ago I worked at a startup doing this - putting cameras on tower cranes. Fun times. Took a while to find PMF and the startup ended up going under. Good times, was super fun!
We make the whole camera system because we couldn't find anything on the market that allowed us to do the AI we wanted. The value for the customer is all in the AI tracking and security detection as well as the ability to just login live and see what's happening on site. So, yes, our core product is our software, but we had to make the hardware to capture market share.
Your website shows OEM cameras and an off the shelf plastic enclosure, along with basic LED floodlights. What hardware are you making? Not saying your product isn't cool, just not clear what hardware you are "making" vs. assembling.
If a software startup assembles a bunch of open source hardware together and packages it as a product, would you say they don't "make" software?
No, I'd say they are more of a software company than a hardware company though. All software runs on some kind of hardware, but these days it is pretty rare for that hardware to be very unique or custom.
I was mostly just curious what custom hardware you had, since that was the topic at hand. My curiosity comes from working in the surveillance AI space for the last ~15 years, and having done a number of custom (as in we made the whole thing) cameras with AI, but now there is a trend more towards using a lightly OEM'd camera with custom firmware in many cases.
Considering the availability of cameras with advanced SoCs capable of doing edge inference, I wanted to ask more about your hardware and your design choices in this market, but I think I'll just bow out. Good luck with your startup!
This is a bit like saying "I made you a birthday cake", when what you did is bought a cake and bought some candles, and stuck the candles in the cake. It's of course semantics, but I imagine people would look at you funny if you said you "made" them a cake when you clearly bought them one.
https://bedrockwireless.com/
Fun fact, we probably have the best port-o-potty detector in the world.