SK E&C, Veea team up for safety management system

SK Engineering & Construction CEO Ahn Jae-hyun, right on screen, gestures during an online meeting with Veea CEO Allen Salmasi, left on screen, to sign an MOU for the two companies' partnership in this photo provided on Wednesday. Courtesy of SK E&C

By Nam Hyun-woo

SK Engineering & Construction (E&C) said Wednesday it will team up with U.S. edge computing firm Veea to develop and operate a construction safety management system for mobile devices.

According to SK E&C, its CEO Ahn Jae-hyun and Veea CEO Allen Salmasi signed an MOU in an online meeting and agreed to make joint efforts to develop the system, called Smart Safety Platform.

Smart Safety Platform will be an integrated safety management system for construction workers and their supervisors. The system will collect and analyze big data to generate risk assessments in relation to industrial accidents and send the analyzed information to users' mobile devices in real time.

Construction sites are generally facing setbacks in setting up access to the internet, as wired access requires progress of construction and wireless access is difficult in underground worksites.

To address these difficulties, SK E&C said it is having a high expectation on Veea's edge computing technology.

Edge computing is a decentralized data processing technology, bringing data processing and storage closer to needed locations at the edge of the network coverage. Since the data is not transmitted to the central cloud server, it can be processed in a shorter response times while saving bandwidth. Edge computing is considered as one of the core technologies required for autonomous driving, smart factories and virtual reality.

Through the partnership, SK E&C said it will establish a network system which can provide safety information at the most challenging construction sites. After accumulating experience and knowhow with the safety management system, the company said it will apply its Smart Safety Platform in overseas projects.

"Through the partnership with Veea, a global communication platform firm, SK E&C expects a distinguished platform service which can significantly improve the safety of construction sites," Ahn said. "SK E&C will continue developing useful platform services to improve construction safety and create social value."

In recent years, SK E&C has been expanding its construction-centric portfolio into various industries.

On Tuesday, the builder held a completion ceremony for Bloom SK Fuel Cell's plant in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province.

Bloom SK Fuel Cell was established as a 51:49 joint venture between U.S. Bloom Energy and SK E&C in January, and will focus on producing solid oxide fuel cells. The plant is expected to produce 50 megawatts of fuel cells in 2021, with a plan to expand the capacity to 400 megawatts in 2027.

Along with producing fuel cells, SK E&C signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract with U.S. data center operator Equinix, to build a 6.4-megawatt fuel cell system powering a data center owned by Equinix in California.

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