Patent ID: 7298258

Claim:
A method of monitoring the activities of workers on a construction site, comprising: placing a plurality of spaced sensors on the construction site and dividing the construction site into a plurality of sectors and monitoring each sector of the construction site with at least one sensor; issuing each worker a construction hard hat having electronic circuitry formed as a part of the hard hat and storing personal information in the electronic circuitry that uniquely identifies a worker; when one or more workers are on the construction site, establishing a wireless communication link between a respective sensor and the electronic circuitry of a respective construction hard hat worn by a worker; after a communication link has been established between a sensor and an electronic circuitry of a particular construction hard hat, reporting to a monitoring station: a. personal information uniquely associated with the electronic circuitry of the construction hard hat, and b. location information that identifies the sector of the construction site where the construction hard hat is located; associating the reported personal information with the reported location information; generating a virtual map of the construction site and associating each sector of the construction site with a corresponding zone of the virtual map; associating each zone of the virtual map with sector specific information stored in a database where the sector specific information includes sector authorization information associated with each sector; accessing the virtual map and identifying the zone of the virtual map corresponding to the associated personal information and location information reported to the monitoring station; and retrieving the sector authorization information associated with the identified zone of the virtual map and comparing the reported personal information with the retrieved sector authorization information and based on that comparison, determining whether the worker wearing the construction hard hat from which the reported personal information was received is authorized to be in a corresponding sector of the construction site.