Construction sites are busy, hazardous places. Fences and security cameras help deter trespassers, but a method of jobsite access management is necessary to ensure that only authorized workers and visitors pass through entry points, and to generate a record of entrants. On large jobsites in particular, paper sign-in sheets at guard stations are simply inadequate. Worker ID badge scanning is a more rigorous method and provides a digital record of who entered the site and when. It leverages badges that are issued by workforce management companies and enabled with radio frequency identification (RFID), near-field communications (NFC) or Bluetooth low energy...
They say that lightning never strikes in the same place twice, but for insurers, it strikes over 250,000 times per year, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. In fact, the cost of homeowners’ claims for damage due to lightning strikes has increased dramatically — up 20 percent over the last three years. According to a new Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) analysis of homeowners’ insurance data, there were 256,000 lightning claims in 2006, causing about $882 million in insured losses. The I.I.I. puts the average claim for lightning at $3,446. By comparison, in 2004, there were about 278,000 lighting...