Hilti's Innovative Exoskeleton Wins an Award

19-09-2023

Hilti’s innovative Exoskeleton has been awarded Health and Safety Solution of the Year at this year’s London Construction Awards, beating 8 other finalists to the top spot.

Judges praised the Exoskeleton for the very clear health, well-being and commercial outcomes it delivers, as well as advanced collaboration with a forward-thinking piece of medical technology.

Hilti’s Exoskeleton was launched in early 2021 and assists construction workers by taking the load placed on the arms and shoulders and transferring it to the hips, using sophisticated mechanical cable and pulley systems. This provides relief for workers completing physically demanding tasks above shoulder level such as fixing plasterboard to ceilings or the sanding of such and has been shown to reduce peak muscle load and relieve shoulders by up to 47%. By reducing the load on a worker’s muscles and joints, it helps lessen pain and decrease stress on the body, also lessening the chance of developing long-term muscular skeletal disorders.

In an experiment a group of 12 people with no known orthopaedic or neurological diseases and with no previous experience using an Exoskeleton were recruited as subjects and given a task. During the task, significant reductions of the heart rate by 7% and of oxygen consumption by 11% were measured when the Exoskeleton was used, demonstrating lesser overall strain on the body.

Commenting on the win Hilti's Head of Product Marketing Northern Europe, Sebastiaan Groenhuijsen said: “At Hilti we have long known the importance of prioritising the health and safety of construction workers alongside offering the most productive solution to our customers. The Exoskeleton is a demonstration of our commitment to improve working conditions in construction. Musculoskeletal disorders are a leading cause of absence and long-term health issues in construction, and we hope others in the sector follow suit in prioritising employee safety.”

According to HSE statistics there were 498,000 workers reported to be suffering from work-related musculoskeletal injuries in 2018/19, with 41% of these injuries relating to upper limbs and neck. This resulted in the loss of 8.9 million working days in 2019/20