Industry Solutions

Construction
RTLS & Safety Solutions

Real-time worker safety and asset visibility for dynamic construction sites.

Construction projects are fast‑moving, high‑risk environments with constantly changing crews, subcontractors and equipment. GridRTLS combines UWB indoor positioning with GPS outdoors to give you live visibility of workers, vehicles and critical tools across the entire jobsite — from excavation to commissioning.

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Construction and infrastructure projects now span multi‑storey structures, temporary site offices, laydown yards and congested access roads. Work crews are mobile, subcontractors change daily and heavy machinery shares space with pedestrians. Traditional paper check‑ins, radios and CCTV cannot reliably tell you exactly who is on site, where they are working or which equipment is moving in risk zones.

GridRTLS delivers a construction‑ready real‑time location system (RTLS) based on ultra‑wideband (UWB) anchors, wireless beacons and wearable tags such as smart helmets, ID badges and wristbands, combined with GPS/RTK positioning outdoors. Personnel and vehicles update their position every 1–2 seconds with typical accuracy better than 30 cm in open areas, enabling precise tracking, geofencing and automatic alarms in high‑risk zones like crane swing areas, drop zones and restricted floors.

Because the platform is map‑centric and time‑aware, safety teams can replay movements for incident investigation, verify evacuation/muster status, and generate attendance and exposure reports by contractor, zone or activity. Integration options with access control, video, work‑permit and project‑management systems turn location data into a shared, auditable record that supports safety programmes, lean‑construction workflows and contractual claims.

📊 Key stats for this industry

Typical Site Coverage: 20,000–200,000m² m²
Peak Workforce: 100–2,000 personnel
Mobile Equipment Tracked: 50–300 vehicles
Typical Indoor Accuracy: <30 cm

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Operational challenges

Limited real-time visibility of workers across dynamic job sites

Construction sites change daily, with rotating subcontractors and shifting work areas. Supervisors often lack precise, real-time knowledge of who is present, where they are located, and whether they are working in approved zones.

High risk of worker–vehicle collision

Excavators, trucks, forklifts and cranes operate close to pedestrian paths. Blind spots and congested areas frequently cause near-misses. Without precise location awareness, enforcing separation is difficult.

Difficulty managing access to hazardous or restricted zones

Areas such as crane swing zones, drop zones, energized electrical spaces, or work-at-height zones require strict access control. Manual monitoring is unreliable, especially during busy operations.

Manual attendance and subcontractor accountability

Paper-based check-ins and manual timekeeping are error-prone and easily manipulated. Contractors often dispute work hours, delays, and equipment usage without trusted location data.

Tool and material loss causing delays

High-value tools, pallets, and temporary assets often go missing on large sites. Without traceability, locating them quickly is difficult, resulting in project delays and increased rental costs.

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Business drivers

Improve worker safety and reduce incidents

Automated geofencing, man-down alerts, and collision-avoidance systems help reduce accidents by providing real-time warnings and historical analytics.

Digitize workforce management

Real-time attendance, contractor time-on-site records, and movement logs reduce administrative work and increase transparency between general contractors and subcontractors.

Increase utilization of machinery and rented equipment

Location and operating-time data help reduce idle time, optimize scheduling, and lower unnecessary rental expenses.

Strengthen compliance and auditing

Location history, zone-entry logs, and automated reporting improve adherence to safety standards such as ISO 45001 and support regulatory audits.

📜 Regulations & safety expectations

Construction safety regulations in most markets require controlled access to hazardous areas, documented permits for high‑risk work, and reliable records of who is on site. An RTLS does not replace regulatory procedures, but it can automate much of the evidence‑gathering needed for audits and incident investigations.

GridRTLS can be configured to support local rules such as mandatory helmet use, restricted zones, working‑at‑height limitations or hot‑work perimeters, and to provide reports aligned with standards like ISO 45001 or your internal HSE framework. Final system design and data‑retention settings should always be reviewed with your local safety and legal teams.

🧩 Typical RTLS use cases

Common positioning and tracking scenarios for this industry.

Worker & Contractor Tracking

Construction crews frequently change locations throughout the day. RTLS automates attendance, validates contractor presence, and provides real-time visibility of workers across multi-level buildings and open yards.

Environment: mixed
Accuracy: 0.3–1 m for personnel tracking
Update rate: 1–2 s
Tracked objects: personnel, visitors_contractors

Typical integrations: Access control, HR systems, attendance & payroll, safety management systems

Vehicle & Heavy Equipment Collision Avoidance

Interactions between workers and machinery create high accident risk. UWB proximity alerts and GPS tracking reduce collisions by providing real-time warnings to both operators and pedestrians.

Environment: mixed
Accuracy: <30 cm for UWB proximity; 1–3 m for GPS outdoors
Update rate: 1s
Tracked objects: personnel, vehicles, mobile_equipment

Typical integrations: Vehicle telematics, CCTV, HSE dashboards

Restricted Zone & Work-at-Height Access Control

Certain zones require special clearance. RTLS automates zone permissions and sends alerts when unauthorized personnel enter, improving compliance and reducing risk.

Environment: indoor
Accuracy: 0.3–1 m
Update rate: 1–3 s
Tracked objects: personnel

Typical integrations: Permit-to-work systems, access control, CCTV

📋 RTLS requirements for this industry

Typical coverage: Full active jobsite including building interiors (all levels), external laydown yards, temporary offices, camps and key access roads — typically 2–20 hectares depending on project phase. Coverage must expand as the structure grows and shrink again during demobilisation.
Personnel scale: From 50–200 workers on smaller building sites up to 2,000+ workers, supervisors and visitors on large civil or industrial projects. System capacity should be designed for at least 1.2–1.5× the expected peak headcount to allow for subcontractor overlap and emergencies.
Assets & vehicles: 10–50 pieces of mobile plant on a medium site (cranes, excavators, dump trucks, concrete pumps, forklifts, MEWPs), plus 100–500 tagged tools, containers and temporary assets such as generators, lighting towers and formwork sets.
Environment constraints: Construction sites combine open outdoor areas and dense steel/concrete structures, with frequent changes to scaffolding, formwork and temporary buildings. RTLS equipment must tolerate dust, mud, vibration, rain and direct sunlight, and operate reliably between roughly –20 °C and +60 °C or more with IP66–IP67 ingress protection and, where required, intrinsically safe housings for explosive or petrochemical environments. Radio conditions are noisy due to welding, power tools and other wireless systems. UWB’s short‑pulse signals and wide spectrum help maintain accuracy and robustness in these conditions, while GPS/RTK receivers must keep lock in partially obstructed “urban canyon” geometries created by high‑rise structures.

🛡️ Safety & reliability expectations

Most construction use cases require sub‑meter accuracy to separate walkways, equipment zones and structural edges; safety‑critical features such as collision warnings and geofences benefit from ~30 cm precision delivered by UWB anchors and tags in line‑of‑sight conditions. GPS/RTK devices are used outdoors for machine guidance, vehicle tracking and structural monitoring; with differential corrections they can reach centimetre‑level accuracy where engineering decisions depend on small displacements.

The platform should support high availability (target 99.9% uptime during working hours), automatic failover of servers or gateways and buffering of tag data during temporary network loss. Wearables typically run for 1–3 months per charge at 1 Hz reporting, while battery‑powered UWB beacons can operate for up to five years, which is important when anchors are mounted on cranes or tall structures.

Safety logic — such as man‑down, evacuation and collision alerts — should be processed as close to the edge as possible to minimise latency.

Because RTLS data can be personally identifiable, projects should define retention periods, role‑based access rights and clear communication with workers and unions, aligning with local privacy laws and company policy.

🛰️ RTLS solutions for this industry

📦 Devices and infrastructure used in this industry

BQ Vehicle-Mounted Positioning Terminal

The BQ Vehicle-Mounted Positioning Terminal is an industrial-grade hybrid positioning device designed for vehicles operating in mines, construction sites, ports, transportation fleets, and harsh outdoor environments. It integrates UWB high-precision positioning, RTK centimeter-level positioning, GNSS multi-system outdoor tracking, 4G full-network communication, and features strong magnetic adsorption, anti-disassembly alarm, motion detection, TTS voice, and optional LoRa/5G modules. With a rugged IP66 design and a built-in 3000mAh rechargeable battery (optional 5000mAh), the BQ terminal ensures reliable real-time tracking and vehicle safety management in demanding industrial conditions.