ForeSite AI

A context-aware AI coworker that transforms Meta Smart Glasses into an intelligent assistant for safer, smarter and more efficient frontline construction.

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ForeSite AI

A Context-Aware AI Coworker for Frontline Construction

ForeSite AI is a context-aware AI coworker that transforms Meta Smart Glasses into an intelligent assistant for frontline construction, combining Vision-Language Models, construction RAG, document intelligence, risk prediction and Agentic AI to deliver proactive and real-time decision support.

Inspiration

Construction is one of the world's largest industries, yet the people performing the most critical work still operate with almost no real-time AI support. Every day, workers make safety-critical and quality-critical decisions based on memory, outdated drawings, radio calls or information that lives somewhere inside hundreds of pages of project documentation.

The construction industry doesn't suffer from a lack of information— it suffers from a lack of context.

Blueprints, BIM models, specifications, inspection reports, schedules, safety manuals and standard operating procedures already exist, but none of them understand what a worker is actually seeing or doing at that exact moment.

We asked ourselves a simple question:

What if AI could understand the job site the same way an experienced engineer does?

That idea became ForeSite AI—a context-aware AI coworker that transforms Meta Smart Glasses into an intelligent construction companion capable of observing, understanding, reasoning, predicting and assisting workers in real time.

Rather than simply answering questions, ForeSite continuously builds contextual awareness of the construction environment, helping workers make faster, safer and better-informed decisions exactly when they matter most.

What it does

ForeSite AI transforms Meta Smart Glasses into an intelligent construction coworker capable of understanding the worker's surroundings, retrieving project-specific knowledge, reasoning about ongoing activities, predicting potential risks and automating construction workflows.

Instead of waiting for workers to ask questions, ForeSite continuously observes the construction environment and provides proactive, context-aware assistance.

Target system performance:

  • Context-aware guidance and project-specific document retrieval delivered in <3 seconds after a worker request.
  • Critical safety alerts issued in <2 seconds for low-latency hazard response.
  • Automated supervisor notifications delivered in <5 seconds after critical events with contextual site information.
  • Automated inspection and defect reports generated in <30 seconds with supporting images, engineering references, and structured documentation.
  • Modular hybrid edge-cloud architecture designed to support hundreds of concurrent workers across large construction sites while maintaining low-latency performance.

Workers can:

Workers can:

  • Receive proactive safety warnings before entering hazardous areas.
  • View installation guidance directly from BIM models, engineering drawings and project documentation.
  • Retrieve specifications, SOPs and manuals through natural voice interaction.
  • Automatically capture defects using hands-free voice commands.
  • Generate structured inspection reports with supporting images and documentation.
  • Receive task-specific guidance based on their location, workflow stage and current activity.
  • Instantly connect with supervisors through automated reporting and intelligent notifications.

Every interaction contributes to a continuously evolving Collective Site Intelligence, enabling ForeSite to build persistent project memory that captures completed tasks, detected hazards, worker observations and operational knowledge. Rather than treating every camera frame as an isolated event, ForeSite continuously reasons over both the current situation and historical site context to provide increasingly intelligent recommendations throughout the project lifecycle.

Supervisors receive real-time visibility into project progress, safety events, inspection reports and operational insights through an intelligent construction dashboard. Automated notifications are designed to reach supervisors in <5 seconds after critical events, creating a shared understanding between frontline workers and project teams.

ForeSite doesn't just see the construction site—it understands it, remembers it, and helps workers act on it.

How we built it

ForeSite AI is designed as a modular hybrid edge-cloud AI platform that combines multiple state-of-the-art AI technologies into a unified construction intelligence system.

The architecture integrates:

  • Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for multimodal scene understanding and visual reasoning.
  • Document Intelligence for interpreting engineering drawings, BIM documents, specifications, manuals and safety procedures.
  • Construction-specific Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for accurate project-aware knowledge retrieval.
  • Context Reasoning to understand worker intent, workflow progression and construction activities.
  • Risk Prediction for proactive identification of potential safety hazards before incidents occur.
  • Multi-Agent AI that coordinates specialized agents responsible for perception, retrieval, reasoning, prediction and workflow automation.
  • Agentic AI for autonomous reporting, document retrieval, supervisor notifications and workflow execution.

The system follows a Perception → Retrieval → Reasoning → Prediction → Action pipeline.

Visual observations from Meta Smart Glasses are fused with project documentation, BIM context, historical project knowledge and live worker interactions to generate explainable recommendations in real time.

To achieve low latency, lightweight perception and voice interaction run at the edge while computationally intensive reasoning, project knowledge retrieval, contextual memory and long-term learning are handled securely in the cloud through a hybrid edge-cloud architecture, targeting <2-second hazard detection and <3-second contextual assistance.

Every recommendation is accompanied by supporting engineering documents, project specifications or safety standards, ensuring transparent and explainable AI-assisted decision making. This ensures engineers can verify every recommendation before taking action, maintaining transparency and trust in safety-critical construction workflows.

ForeSite is designed as a human-in-the-loop system that augments construction professionals rather than replacing them, keeping workers and engineers in control of every critical decision.

ForeSite AI is designed using existing technologies—including Vision-Language Models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Meta Smart Glasses, edge inference and cloud-based AI services—making the proposed architecture technically feasible with current hardware and software ecosystems while allowing incremental deployment in real-world construction environments.

Challenges we ran into

Designing AI for construction requires much more than computer vision.

Construction sites are dynamic, unstructured and information-rich environments where meaningful decisions depend on simultaneously understanding visual context, engineering documentation, worker intent, project history and evolving site conditions.

One of our biggest challenges was enabling AI to reason across multiple information sources instead of simply detecting objects. The system needed to understand why something mattered, not just what it was seeing.

Balancing ambitious AI capabilities with practical deployment was equally important. We designed a modular hybrid edge-cloud architecture that maximizes the capabilities of Meta Smart Glasses while maintaining low-latency performance, scalability and deployment feasibility for real construction environments.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of creating a unified AI architecture that combines perception, contextual reasoning, project knowledge retrieval, predictive intelligence and autonomous workflow automation into a single context-aware construction platform.

Rather than solving one isolated problem, ForeSite establishes the foundation for Context Intelligence across the entire construction lifecycle.

The introduction of Collective Site Intelligence allows every worker interaction, inspection, observation and completed task to continuously enrich the project's shared knowledge, enabling progressively smarter recommendations as construction progresses.

Most importantly, we designed an AI system that doesn't simply recognize objects—it understands situations, explains its reasoning and helps workers make informed decisions in real time.

What we learned

This project reinforced that impactful AI isn't built by wrapping a chatbot around a prompt.

The real value comes from combining multimodal perception, project knowledge, contextual reasoning, predictive intelligence, explainable AI and autonomous actions into a cohesive system capable of solving real operational challenges.

Throughout this project we gained practical experience with Vision-Language Models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Document Intelligence, Multi-Agent AI systems, multimodal reasoning, hybrid edge-cloud architectures and the challenges of deploying trustworthy AI in safety-critical environments.

Perhaps most importantly, we learned that successful AI systems don't simply answer questions—they understand context.

What's next for ForeSite AI

Our immediate objective is to build a fully functional prototype using the Meta Smart Glasses SDK and validate real-time construction workflows in live site environments.

Future milestones include:

  • Real-time hazard detection and predictive safety assistance.
  • BIM and Digital Twin integration for live project visualization.
  • Automated inspection, quality assurance and defect reporting.
  • Continuous Collective Site Intelligence that learns from every worker interaction.
  • Multi-user collaboration across workers, supervisors and project managers.
  • Explainable AI recommendations with engineering references.
  • Expansion into manufacturing, warehousing, mining, utilities, healthcare and other frontline industries where context-aware AI can improve safety, productivity and operational efficiency.

Our long-term vision is to make ForeSite AI the context intelligence layer for frontline work—bringing proactive, real-time decision support wherever skilled professionals operate.

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