Using health and safety data through Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming workplace safety and monitoring practices, helping organisations to spot hazards before they become accidents and empowering employees to work with a greater peace of mind, writes Gary Ng, CEO and Co-founder of viAct.
Every worker in a high-risk sector remembers that moment of hesitation – stepping onto a wet floor, climbing scaffolding, or navigating a busy warehouse – and thinking, “I hope nothing goes wrong”. However, UK-based companies are now turning that uncertainty into confidence.
From construction sites in London to offshore rigs in Aberdeen, and factories across the Midlands, high-risk industries are harnessing technology to predict risks, prevent injuries, and create workplaces where safety is second nature. Every alert, every sensor reading, and every report now tells a story that helps organisations act smarter and faster.
Safety at workplaces has long been about following rules and marking checklists. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), 124 workers suffered fatal injuries from 2024 to 2025 alone in Great Britain. These involve the highest account of falls from height, struck by moving object or vehicle and overturning.
Such high-risk sectors in the UK share similar safety challenges across Europe, although the legal frameworks may differ. According to the report by the EU Occupational Safety and Health Administration (EU-OSHA) in 2025, the levels of fatigue among workers in these sectors are very high, which directly impacts on their safety at workplace.
AI-powered safety tools now provide a constant pulse on workplace conditions – ranging from AI CCTVs located across the facilities, Internet-of-Things (IoT) based wearables on workers, or drones monitoring from above, real-time information that alerts Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) managers and supervisors to unsafe behaviours, potential equipment failures, or environmental hazards.
One initiative came from an innovation agency in the UK government when it funded the development of a real-time video analysis platform to effectively monitor the entries and exits of industrial sites. This shows the active recipient of AI as a solution to increasing health and safety risks in industrial sites.
Such AI-based safety interventions can help safety managers detect workers entering high-risk zones without appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), monitor operator fatigue, posture, and movement near heavy machinery or provide early warning for hazardous conditions.
From Near-Misses to Knowledge Bases
As per the HSE, the total number of workers sustaining non-fatal injuries in 2023 to 2024 in Great Britain stands at 604,000 majorly due to slips, trips and falls, during lifting tasks or through acts of violence.
Every such instance leading to an incident or even the ones missed to transition, carries valuable lessons. Organisations across high-risk industries are now capturing and analysing these near-misses to turn them into actionable safety insights.
In sectors such as construction, manufacturing, mining, and logistics, AI-driven systems can minutely detect patterns from the near-miss events, unsafe behaviours around them, or equipment malfunctions.
By integrating machine data, sensor readings, and operator feedback, project managers can predict potential risks, optimise workflows, and implement targeted training. Over time, this approach transforms into a proactive framework, reducing incidents and developing a safety culture of continuous improvement.
While turning near-misses into knowledge is a powerful step towards safer workplaces. But in highly sensitive industries, the levels of prevention must go further. Every entry, every transition, and every action needs to be visible in real-time. This is where intelligent, vision-based systems move beyond analysing past incidents to delivering real-time, precision-focused oversight.
Cleanroom Safety: A UK Pharma Story
In the high-stakes world of sterile pharmaceutical production, even a small lapse can have serious consequences. A leading UK manufacturer of sterile injectables faced such persistent challenges in the form of tailgating during shift changes, unauthorised entries into sterile zones, and unsafe cross-zone movements between chemical handling and packaging areas occurred. Manual monitoring and paper-based access logs often left blind spots, creating hidden contamination risks.
To undertake these challenges head on, the company deployed an advanced AI-powered access and movement monitoring solution. With its deployment facility on the premises, the sensitive production data stayed secure.
The solution combined AI-based features such as face-authenticated entry, tailgating detection, and cross-zone movement monitoring to provide real-time oversight of every transition to the safety managers on site. Within a month, the cross-zone violations fell by 75 per cent with recurring tailgating incidents were eliminated.
A Vision for Tomorrow
In the UK, the integration of AI and data-based solutions in workplace safety is reshaping how heavy industries operate. Today’s technologies, whether from real-time monitoring to predictive analytics, are helping companies anticipate risks, prevent accidents, and create a safer and more efficient work environment.
Safety enables speed. This includes product safety, information safety, psychological safety, health and wellness, reputation safety, and yes, physical safety. When people feel safe, they can move faster and more confidently.
By turning data into actionable insights, EHS leaders can spot patterns, reduce near-misses, and respond to hazards before they escalate. This approach not only protects employees but also strengthens operational efficiency, compliance, and overall workforce confidence.
Looking forward, high-risk workplaces where safety is embedded into every process will become the standard rather than the exception. With AI as a partner, organisations can move beyond reactive measures, creating environments where employees feel secure, operations run smoothly, and innovation is accelerated.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gary Ng, CEO and Co-Founder of viAct (an AI + video analytics company focused on enhancing safety and compliance across construction and other high-risk industries). With a background in building engineering, he became an ‘AIpreneur’ with inception of viAct in 2016. He has over 10 years’ experience in implementing technological innovations in construction industry.
