We introduced the first results of our COVID-19 safety compliance benchmarking data at the end of June. You can take a look at the full results by clicking through to our June 30 blog post, but briefly, compliance with glove wearing at 90% or more in all regions. Mask compliance, too, was high, with the West, Midwest and Northeast at more than 80%, and the South lagging a bit behind at 72%. Social distancing, however, needed improvement, especially in the South, where just 57% of the images that our AI Vinnie analyzed showed people standing more than six feet apart and avoiding groups of 10 people or more.
The initial data provided an interesting snapshot of how the construction industry stood in June 2020. But with more data, you gain more insights, and our data from July 2020 adds longitudinal depth, which enables us to better understand COVID-19 safety compliance trends across regions. I’m happy to say that construction is moving in the right direction.
The July data showed improvement across the board, particularly when it comes to social distancing. In the West, workers improved social compliance by 14 points over June, by far the biggest gain, but all other regions saw improvement as well. Unfortunately, however, social distancing compliance is still just 61% in the South, 17 to 19 percentage points lower than other regions.
We haven’t embarked on this data journey alone. Newmetrix (formerly Smartvid.io) is working with three other companies — Procore, OxBlue and Multivista — each of which will provide data on a different aspect of COVID-19 and construction. Our data is drawn from our own customer base, and it spans more than 38,000 workers across the country.
We hope this information helps your organization benchmark your own compliance against others within your region. In a few weeks, we’ll release August data — here’s hoping that the improving COVID-19 safety compliance trend continues to hold so we can avoid spreading the virus and additional shutdowns and work stoppages.
Want to gain a better understanding of how your organization is complying with mask wearing and social distancing? Get in touch and discover what the COVID-19 risk looks like on your projects.