Industry 5.0 : improving construction safety using worker-centric technology

Industry 5.0 emphasises collaboration between technology and humans, enabling workplace resilience while following social values (Sindhwani et al. 2022). However, technology has not been fully integrated into the construction industry by any measure, most of it by choice. Moreover, the cost of time and money to adopt digitalisation is often prohibitive for most construction organisations. However, there are incremental improvements that most builders and subcontractors can implement and maintain that do not only improve the safety process but also their organisational culture. Safety results in the built environment have been unsatisfactory in many Western countries. The next significant increase in built environment investment will attract less experienced worker who as a group behave unsafely on a construction site.