Kwant, one of the world’s leading workforce management and safety solutions using IoT data, announces their continued partnership with Walbridge, the general contractor on Ford’s new BlueOval City Project in Stanton, Tennessee. The BlueOval City project is a $5.6 billion electric vehicle battery plant investment with roughly 3,600 acres of land and is expected to produce over 5,800 jobs for the American people. The completion of the BlueOval City project will go beyond just impacting jobs, generating tax revenue, and boosting the economy, but will also help support our planet and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to support air quality. 

Walbridge is a full-service construction company headquartered in Detroit and has built projects both big and small in multiple geographic locations across the world. During the construction of BlueOval City, Walbridge has brought on Kwant to provide contactless access control, turnstiles, and smart badges with real-time visibility for enhanced safety and productivity outcomes.

The Kwant smart badges come with built-in safety features and allow for easier workforce and contractor management on construction sites. Each smart badge comes with SOS alerting for faster response times in case of an emergency. Having the ability to respond to emergencies within seconds gives Walbridge a chance to dramatically enhance their safety program when managing a large location like BlueOval City.  

To ensure the safety and security of their workforce and trade partners during construction, Kwant installed an access control system with turnstiles at all access points. 

By leveraging Kwant’s unique advantage and proprietary sensors with long battery life and LoRaWAN connectivity, Kwant was able to support thousands of workers that move and pass throughout the jobsite. Contactless access control saves hours of time spent on manual processes, especially in high-traffic access points where the Kwant sensors scan every worker who is in a moving vehicle without interruption.

With contactless access control and smart badges, Walbridge was able to automate headcount for real-time access to daily reports. By automating headcount, Walbridge saved hours on manual data collection and reporting. They were able to optimize scheduling and reduce delays and associated costs. 

It was critical for Walbridge to know who was on the jobsite for the safety and security purposes of this high-profile project. Kwant’s technology was able to flag unverified workers and notify management when there was unauthorized access.

Kwant and Walbridge have partnered on multiple large-scale projects and continue to push the narrative in supporting construction safety and productivity. Walbridge is committed to using the latest technology to deliver a safe, efficient, and productive project for Ford. The partnership with Kwant is expected to steer Walbridge in the right direction when it comes to proactive and reactive data-driven decisions around workforce management and safety. 

“The Kwant team responded to ever-changing field conditions, keeping the data for the access control solution secure, even during storm outages. The greatest benefits of deploying sensors like this were the productivity gains getting everyone to work. Rather than forcing all workers to check in through turnstiles, the system reads workers on the shuttle buses as they drive by, which was a huge efficiency gain, now that the daily peak workforce has exceeded 4000.”

• John J, Director of Innovation, Walbridge