Athenium Analytics Releases Weather-risk Product for Construction

Athenium Analytics, a leader in risk analysis and business intelligence solutions, today released the first comprehensive weather risk-management dashboard tailored for the construction industry. The software-as-a-service platform, called GaugeConstruction, is being released nationwide after a year of development with the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC).

"With experience forecasting and calculating weather risk for some of the nation’s top insurance carriers, Athenium Analytics offers the kind of solution our members need to be successful," said Stephen E. Sandherr, the chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of America.  "This solution provides our members with a valuable tool for mitigating risk and building better projects."

As the leading association in construction, AGC represents more than 27,000 member firms, providing a range of services satisfying the needs and concerns of its members, thereby improving the quality of construction and protecting the public interest.

"Having AGC as a go-to-market collaborator is a coveted seal of approval for anyone with solutions for the construction industry and contractors," said Bill Pardue, chairman and chief executive officer at Athenium Analytics.

"We are delighted that AGC chose our team and our insurance expertise in the disciplines of natural hazard risk, predictive modeling and customized alerting solutions for its members," Pardue said. "The same data analysis that provides dashboard solutions for insurance has a great amount of applicability to assist general contractors in solving their business challenges."

GaugeConstruction delivers short-term, long-term and post-event weather insights and analytics, with optimized configurability to track every project’s critical path. Features of GaugeConstruction include:

  • Weekly breakdowns of each construction phase’s distinct risk profile, based on geography and historical weather.
  • An estimate of lost weather days based on historical data and user-determined thresholds.
  • Proprietary weather models to generate configurable seven-day forecast alerts for hail, rainfall, freezing rain, snowfall, wind gusts, cold, heat and heat index.
  • Machine-learned, super-ensemble hurricane forecasts providing 10-day track and wind predictions.
  • Hyper-local verification of weather severity down to the project-level with configurable notifications for different projects, phases, weather perils and thresholds.

"Successful completion of large construction projects depends on identifying and preparing for risks," said Mike Bennett, a meteorologist and vice president of product strategies at Athenium Analytics. "Bad weather and other natural hazards impact the bottom line at every phase.

"GaugeConstruction is a game-changer, allowing you to mitigate risks in the short-term while planning for the long-term – avoid lost work days with near-term weather forecasts, manage resources through phase-specific risk analysis, and prove damages with hyper-local post-event hazard verification."

GaugeConstruction is launching at this week’s AGC Surety Bonding & Construction Risk Management conference, and the dashboard will be offered at a discount for AGC members. Bennett noted that release of GaugeConstruction today marked only the first of several business intelligence solutions that Athenium Analytics is developing for the construction industry. 

"Next up is GaugeSubs," Bennett said. "Athenium Analytics is building the nation’s most useful database of information about subcontractors for review by general contractors and insurers. We’ll also deliver risk scores associated with each subcontractor based on such factors as finances, past performance and regulatory compliance.

"We will include both information gleaned from public records and also proprietary assessments," Bennett continued.  "Additionally, subcontractors will have the opportunity for self-reporting. No other provider to the construction industry offers such a comprehensive database for risk information." 

About The Associated General Contractors of America
AGC of America is the leading association for the construction industry. It represents more than 27,000 firms, including over 6,500 of America’s leading general contractors, and nearly 9,000 specialty-contracting firms. Learn more at www.agc.org.

About Athenium Analytics
Athenium Analytics supports construction companies, insurance carriers and the U.S. Intelligence Community with insightful and reliable business and scientific intelligence through intuitive web applications. Its innovative quality-assurance and analytical solutions provide customers with meaningful, timely and actionable information to measure, manage and mitigate risk. Athenium Analytics has more than 100 employees across offices in Washington, D.C., Waltham, MA, and Dover, NH. Learn more at www.athenium.com/construction.

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