Capabilities

What Background
can understand.

Background arrives with a library of built-in capabilities covering the most important situations in construction and infrastructure. As it learns your project — your RAMS, your programme, your contract — more emerge.

How capabilities work

Not alerts. Understanding.

A capability is not a sensor trigger or a threshold alarm. It is a pattern of evidence — observations combined with context — that CompoundOS™ recognises as a situation requiring attention. No single observation fires a capability. Evidence combinations do.

When a capability fires, it produces an OperationalObservation — a structured piece of understanding that includes what was observed, what evidence supports it, what the confidence level is, and what intervention is recommended. Every output is traceable back to the evidence that created it.

How a capability fires
01
SightAgent™ observes — person detected, plant operating, zone boundary active
02
CompoundOS™ combines evidence with loaded context — RAMS, permit, supervision requirement
03
Confidence calculated — observation confidence × context completeness × historical calibration
04
OperationalObservation produced — routed to the right stakeholders with recommended intervention
Safety

Safety capabilities

Situations where people may be exposed to harm — grounded in the RAMS, permits and supervision requirements that define what safe looks like on each work package.

Safety
Exclusion zone exposure
People and plant in simultaneous operation within a defined exclusion zone without the required controls in place. The most critical people-plant interface situation.
Evidence sources
Camera feeds RAMS control measures Zone boundaries Plant state Supervision record
Routed to
Safety Manager · Construction Manager
Immediate
Safety
Supervision coverage gap
Required supervision absent from a work package or supervisor covering multiple packages simultaneously against RAMS requirement. Identified before the gap creates exposure.
Evidence sources
Camera feeds RAMS supervision requirement Workforce data Work package status
Routed to
Safety Manager · Foreman
Immediate
Safety
Safe system decay
Control measures established and verified at the start of a work package showing signs of drift over time. Barriers moved. Signage absent. Procedures not followed. Identified before the system fails.
Evidence sources
Camera feeds RAMS control measures Inspection records Historical baseline
Routed to
Safety Manager · Construction Manager
Daily
Safety
People–plant interface pattern
Recurring proximity events between people and operating plant that do not individually breach thresholds but collectively indicate a systemic control failure. Pattern recognised before an incident occurs.
Evidence sources
Camera feeds Plant movement data Zone records Historical pattern
Routed to
Safety Manager
Daily · Weekly
Delivery

Delivery capabilities

Situations where programme momentum is at risk — connected to the programme, workforce data and site activity to identify constraints before float is consumed.

Delivery
Momentum loss
Activity rhythm deteriorating against programme. Cycle time extending beyond planned. Output rate dropping. Float compressing toward a critical threshold. Identified while there is still time to intervene.
Evidence sources
Camera feeds Programme data Cycle time observation Float calculation
Routed to
Construction Manager · Planner
Immediate · Daily
Delivery
Workface constraint
Crew present on site but unable to progress. Access blocked, material not available, plant constraint or interface not cleared. Background identifies the constraint and the likely cause simultaneously.
Evidence sources
Camera feeds Workforce data Programme data Plant state
Routed to
Foreman · Construction Manager
Immediate
Delivery
Programme drift
Sustained deviation between planned and actual progress across one or more work packages. Not a single bad day — a pattern of underperformance that is compressing float toward a milestone commitment.
Evidence sources
Programme data Camera observation Workforce data Historical trend
Routed to
Project Director · Planner · Commercial Manager
Daily · Weekly
Delivery
Activity vs progress
High activity levels not translating to programme progress. Plant moving, crews busy, site active — but output not matching effort. Identifies inefficiency patterns before they become entrenched.
Evidence sources
Camera feeds Programme data Plant utilisation Workforce data
Routed to
Construction Manager · Planner
Daily
Commercial

Commercial capabilities

Situations where commercial position is at risk — connected to the contract, programme and site observations to surface obligations before they expire.

Commercial
Early Warning obligation
Programme drift has reached a threshold where an NEC4 Early Warning notification may be required. Float consumed, milestone at risk, EW period calculated from the contract and tracked continuously.
Evidence sources
Programme data NEC4 contract Float calculation Milestone record
Routed to
Commercial Manager · Project Manager
Immediate
Commercial
Float compression
Programme float compressing toward a contractually significant threshold. Not yet at Early Warning level — but trending toward it. Commercial Manager notified while there is still time to act before the obligation window opens.
Evidence sources
Programme data Contract obligations Trend calculation
Routed to
Commercial Manager · Planner
Daily
Commercial
Compensation Event pattern
Recurring constraint or delay pattern with potential Compensation Event implications. Background identifies the pattern, records the evidence and flags the commercial consequence — before the window to notify closes.
Evidence sources
Camera evidence Programme data NEC4 contract Constraint record
Routed to
Commercial Manager
Daily · Weekly
Quality

Quality capabilities

Situations where quality standards are at risk — connected to inspection records, method statements and the quality requirements defined for each work package.

Quality
Inspection coverage gap
Required inspections not completed within the defined window for a work package. Background tracks inspection requirements against completions and identifies gaps before work progresses beyond the point of remedy.
Evidence sources
Inspection records Method statement Programme data Work package status
Routed to
Quality Manager · Site Engineer
Daily
Quality
Method statement deviation
Site activity deviating from the approved method statement for a work package. Sequence not followed. Required checks absent. Background identifies the deviation while the work is still in progress.
Evidence sources
Camera feeds Method statement RAMS Work package status
Routed to
Quality Manager · Site Engineer · Foreman
Immediate

Emerging capabilities

More emerge with every project.

The capabilities above are built in — available from day one. But Background also learns from each project it operates on. As CompoundOS™ accumulates evidence from your RAMS, your programme and your contract, it identifies patterns that are specific to your project, your organisation and your environment.

These emerging capabilities are not generic. They reflect the specific situations that matter on your site — situations that no pre-built library could anticipate, because they emerge from the intersection of your particular context and the evidence that Background observes.

Example — infrastructure programme
Background identifies that productivity on WP-014 consistently drops when two specific plant types operate simultaneously in Zone 3. This pattern does not appear in any pre-built capability. It emerges from 6 weeks of site evidence.
Example — safety pattern
Background identifies that exclusion zone breaches on this project correlate with shift changeovers — a 20-minute window where supervision coverage drops. A project-specific capability emerges to monitor that window.

The defensible position

The model is rented.
The ontology is owned.

Background's capabilities are not dependent on any single AI model. The underlying language model can be replaced or upgraded. What cannot be easily replicated is the Construction World Model — the ontology that makes observations meaningful, the capability library that defines what matters, and the accumulated evidence relationships that improve with every project.

This is what makes Background defensible over time. Not the model. The understanding.

Construction World Model
Ten construction functions. Six output types. Six time horizons. Seventeen stakeholder profiles. The ontology that makes site observations meaningful.
Capability library
Built-in capabilities covering the most important construction situations. Expanded by every project Background operates on.
Evidence relationships
Every observation connected to every outcome. Every intervention linked to the evidence that created it. Accumulated understanding that transfers across projects.
Compound Learning
Every outcome observed by Background feeds back into the capability that produced the output. What worked is retained. What did not improves. Every project teaches the next one.

Next step

See the capabilities working on a real project.

Walk through a real scenario — capability firing, evidence traced, understanding delivered, intervention created. From observation to outcome.

Book a demo How it works
Every output is traceable
Every capability output traces back to the evidence that created it. Observation, evidence combination, confidence level, stakeholder routing — all visible and explainable.
Arrives ready from day one
Background does not need to be trained from scratch. Load the RAMS, the programme and the contract — and the built-in capabilities are active immediately.
Gets more useful over time
Emerging capabilities, Compound Learning and organisational memory mean Background becomes more precise and more useful with every project — not less.