FYLD: Making field crews safer and more productive

Utility and construction crews perform essential work, ensuring gas and water mains keep flowing, roads are maintained, and more. Working out in the field brings operational challenges. That’s where FYLD comes in. The startup emerged from our incubator, Koru, with a goal to make field work safer and more productive through technology.

FYLD replaces traditional paper-based risk assessments, including “digital paper” approaches that replicate old ways of working on digital forms. It delivers dynamic risk assessments through video and voice analytics. Simply put, a field worker equipped with a mobile device and the FYLD app can walk around a job site, take video and talk about what they see. FYLD’s AI-driven engine then flags potentially dangerous conditions and prompts control measures.

In the first year of deployment with FYLD’s inaugural customer—U.K. gas distributor SGN, an Ontario Teachers’ portfolio company—the platform reduced worker injuries and incidents by 20% and cut time spent on risk assessments by 75%. In addition to seeing cost savings of almost £3 million, SGN was able to better manage crew fatigue and reduce the number of kilometres supervisors spent driving to various sites.

In 2020, FYLD won the prestigious “Emerging Technology of the Year Award” at the UK IT Industry Awards. It won two awards in 2022 at the UK Energy Innovation Awards, including “Innovator of the Year.” Its technology is now being deployed across water infrastructure, highway construction and maintenance, and will soon be used for the rollout of 5G cabling.

Having a centralized, data-driven hub of operational information is vital for the productivity, safety and efficiency for field teams. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has this digitization of processes at the forefront of its activities, encouraging and enabling the development and implementation of ground-breaking technologies like FYLD.

- Shelley Copsey, CEO of FYLD