LafargeHolcim strengthens commitment to health & safety with new mobile app partnership
The rise of digital technologies is helping the construction industry approach health and safety prevention with greater precision. LafargeHolcim strives to set new standards in safeguarding the well-being of our internal and external stakeholders, while using digital as a crucial enabler. The latest example of this commitment is our partnership with a revolutionary mobile app dedicated to mapping sound environment and air quality.
Empowering employees to be smarter health & safety agents through digital
Health & Safety: our overarching value
At LafargeHolcim, our commitment to health and safety is embedded in everything that we do. As the most advanced company in the building materials sector, we aim to set new health and safety standards while conducting our business with zero harm to people and creating a healthy and safe environment for our employees, contractors, communities, and customers.
The digital transformation of our Group and protecting the well-being of our employees, contractors and communities are two crucial elements that underpin LafargeHolcim’s strategy. As we embark on a journey towards digitalization, we are actively seeking out ways new technologies can provide data that could substantially improve the health and safety of our internal and external stakeholders.
Our aspirations include developing digital indicators and models that give the most precise risk assessment possible. One of these risks is auditory fatigue. Auditory fatigue is a health concern across a wide spectrum of industries, including construction. Not only a precursor to diminished hearing in the long run, prolonged exposure to intense auditory stimuli can also lead to irritability and concentration loss, and thus the possibility of accidents on site or even off the clock.
This can be quite a dangerous liability on construction sites, which is why LafargeHolcim seized the opportunity to take an innovative approach to measuring a sound environment. How? By partnering with a start-up making noise of its own across Europe and America: Ambiciti!
Mapping environmental pollution from your back pocket
Ambiciti is a revolutionary mobile app that brings worldwide information about noise and air pollution and services based on pollution levels to nearly 30 million inhabitants.
Ambient noise is measured through a phone microphone and this data, along with other environmental measures, is used to produce hourly maps of sound levels up to a street level. Ambiciti’s “itinerary” feature enables pedestrians to choose a route that minimizes exposure to noise or air pollution.
Ambiciti is also a community builder and enabler for creating better informed citizens and companies. The quality of its maps is only as strong as the quality of the users’ engagement. Much like Waze, the community based navigation app, Ambiciti users feed the app with information on their environment, throughout the day possibly in collaboration with other Ambiciti users.
"We aim to produce the best assessment of exposure to environmental pollution and hope to meet the growing demand of citizens, but also of companies who are careful of the environmental pollution problems," says Valerie Issarny, co-founder of Ambiciti.
Ramping up our health & safety expertise, creating new services
For LafargeHolcim, making Ambiciti available to a pilot group internally means being able to ramp up our expertise in health & safety and raise awareness of the ambient sound levels to which our employees are exposed on the job and in their personal lives.
It also means being able to provide innovative solutions to our customers and end users: Ambiciti’s technology could help assess a building’s acoustic performance, whereas our experts could advise customers on building material solutions that would lower auditory fatigue and boost comfort.
The collaboration with LafargeHolcim will allow Ambiciti to demonstrate and further develop its services for workers. Raising personal environmental awareness has great potential regarding health and safety.
We share the same view about making people actors of their surroundings and health. We’re excited about innovative applications like Ambiciti in the fields of health & safety and beyond.
