Dive Brief:

• Construction wearables maker Triax Technologies will integrate its IoT-enabled wearable tracking system Spot-r with Autodesk's BIM 360 to boost job site connectivity and monitor workers and equipment on the ground, the company announced Monday at Autodesk University in Las Vegas.
• With the partnership, Triax's new Spot-r EquipTag will transmit real-time data on workers' and equipment's activity, location and safety to BIM 360, allowing offsite managers to observe their movement in the program's 2-D building drawings and 3-D models.
• The technology aims to reduce risk on the job site by offering contractors greater insight into real-time operations.

Dive Insight:

Triax has come a long way since this time last year. In November 2016, the company released its belt-clipped sensor that was originally developed to monitor professional athletes' performance. That iteration of the Spot-r sensor came outfitted with an accelerometer, gyroscope and altimeter to measure workers' injury type and severity, and to monitor employees' presence on a project.

Over the past few months, the company has been finding ways to better use its product's data. In August, Triax announced a new partnership with Procore to improve the analysis and management of Spot-r's data. The integration with Procore's cloud-based job site management platform, according to both companies, was meant to remove the need to input such data manually, and to eliminate the need for users to navigate separate software platforms for managing data.

But not all wearables are tied to a worker's safety or location. Other technologies have been developed to monitor workers in hot or cold environments by using personal cooling or heating devices to maintain an adequate body temperature. Other wearables can track workers' brain activity.

While the market interest is there, the wider challenge to mainstream adoption of such devices is interoperability. Partnerships like Triax's with Procore — and now Autodesk — are working to change ​that. Procore, too, announced earlier this year that its latest Construction OS platform would be open to third-party developers who could make future integrations of other construction apps and programs possible.

In the meantime, growing popularity in wearable technology outside of the construction industry will likely encourage further developments in the space. According to Markets and Markets, the global market for the technology is set to expand to $51.6 billion by 2022.