Best Practice: DIDs and Verifiable Credentials in the Construction Industry

Yes, hello everyone. My name is introduced is Francisca Hamma and I'm representing Type io. Type IO is a spinoff of Linner Group. And Linner Group is a worldwide leading construction company. And joining me today is Aida Hui from isru. She's the product owner of the SO Solution and together we're gonna present our Ingle solution. Today Ingle transforms the document and access management in the construction industry using DDS and verifiable credentials.

We are unlocking the potential of digital identities, not by looking for problems that digital identities could solve, but by developing solutions to problems. So let's have a look at the challenges on construction sites, especially regarding the use case of making sure everybody is working on construction site is legally employed. There are multiple stakeholders involved, which means that all the information chain is not always very transparent and clear. And also the whole process is very time consuming.

You need to imagine that checking a person for legal employment takes up to 10 minutes and you need to repeat this process every four to six weeks per construction site. And also the process is very heavy on paperwork. A contractor for example, when they're checking somebody for legal employment on construction sites, they're making copies of the workers of the subcontractor.

They're putting the paperwork into paper folders And what's really happening with this paper folder where there's sensitive data in there, like for example ID cards, there are work permits or copies of social security certificates in there. What's really happening to them after construction site is finished. It's not always very transparent and also it's not very clear, especially for the subcontractors which documents are needed because it varies like for example, for the nationality of the person and also on other factors. And of course there's risk of errors in non-compliance.

And in the end, don't forget, we are not in a clean office environment. We are on a construction site and it's dusty and dirty. So looking at all those challenges, this is where our INGO solution steps in as a game changer, we digitalize the whole process to make everything faster, quicker and more secure. And this is how our digitalized process looks like. So first in line we provide our Ingle platform to the contractor.

The contractor provides the Ingle to the subcontractor and the subcontractor issues personal documents of the worker in the Ingle platform, the worker downloads the INGO app in the app store and they receive access keys and documents and on the site they're just showing the documents and they get access and that's where they can display all the documents digitally to look a bit closer.

We provide a management suite for contractor and subcontractors where they can manage the subcontractors, they can manage the workers, but they can also manage construction sites even before somebody's physically accessing a construction site. And in addition, we also provide a mobile app for workers where they can manage personal documents to store credentials, which could, which could be for example documents as I already mentioned, like a D card or work permit, but also a credential could be a construction site. And they also generate a site access key in there, which is a QR code.

And this QR code they used to get access to the construction site and we are truly excited about the solution. So we want you to understand why we are so excited and what advantages INGO brings on the table.

It's, you need to imagine, as I said, it takes up to 10 minutes per person every four to six weeks per construction site to check the documents. And with INGO it's just one second scan. So basically within INGO you scan a QR code of the worker and you know exactly if all the documents are complete and valid with without showing any other documents or data you minimize or even eliminate liability risks. And also it's really easy Ingo, for the subcontractors to know which documents are needed for every worker.

Ingo just guides the subcontractors through the whole process so in the end you can ensure that only legally employed personnel onsite. And this was just a broad overview of how ING works. I hand over to AANA who will dive into more details. Thank you fca. So now I will give an overview of how we realize the concept of decentralized identity in our solution. But before I jump into the details, I want to mention here the three identity domains. We have heard a lot of talks in the past two days about decentralized and digitalized identity and most of the time we talk about people identity.

We don't consider that in an working ecosystem. We also have businesses and machines which need to be uniquely identified in in order to be able to exchange information securely. So with INGO we have build an ecosystem in which not just people but also businesses are uniquely identified through decentralized identifiers. And we have also plans to involve machines or devices in the future. So in INGO we have three main stakeholders. As also Francisca mentioned, we have contractors which are also called project owners and they manage the construction sites.

We have subcontractors which are commissioned by the contractors and will be sent to the construction sites. And we have workers which are employed by the subcontractors and will be sent to the construction site to work on them. In the next few slides I will give you an overview about each stakeholder and how in INGO enables a reliable and secure site access. So beginning with this contractors, they are project owners and they are able to manage the projects, their projects on the in INGO and they are able to share these projects with the subcontractors.

But in order to share these information securely, they have to identify the subcontractor and make a communication channel with them. So in INGO, each company will be assigned to a public decentralized identifier through which the co companies are able to identify each other uniquely and build this communication channel in order to share the information securely. For example, the project information. Another important functionality for the contractors is that they want to make sure that workers have all documents needed legally needed to access a construction site.

So the subcontractor will send the documents of the con, the workers to the contractor upfront to be verified and they use also these secure communication channel to exchange this information. After the verification process is done, they, their documents will be automatically removed from the contractors system. So due to data minimization principle and to be GDPR compliant. So from the subcontractor's perspective, they want to manage their workers and the documents of the workers in INGO to do so.

They also built a communication channel with the workers' wallet app and they issued the documents that are needed to have access to the construction site as fiber credential. For example, ID card work permit or other certifications that are needed. So as I mentioned also earlier, the subcontractors will also send these information to the contractor to be verified and as soon as the verification is done, the subcontractor is also able to issue the site verifiable credential on behalf of the contractor. So how does it look like for the workers?

They have to install the INGO wallet app from the stores and they will receive the verifiable credential from their employer and they have also the site verifiable credential. And with all this information they are able to generate the site access key and at this point they have to present some of these information to the contractor in order to gain access to the site for a specific period of time. So to wrap it up and we have seen contractor and subcontractor and worker and as may all of you know, we have built a trust triangle between these three main stakeholders.

In INGO we have contractor and subcontractor which are actually bind to each other and they have an existing trust relationship. We have transformed this to a digital format using DDS and organizational wallets. We have subcontractors and workers which also make a secure communication channel and the subcontractor issue the verifiable credential. And we have also workers which answer the proof requests from the contractor or project owner in order to gain access to the site. I also want to mention that we have build across company ecosystem.

So a contractor in one context or in one project, which work with other subcontractors could also take the role of a subcontractor in another context. So there are, there are no limitations here. At last I would like to mention the technical basis of ingo.

As, as atos, we have provide the core functionality of INGO with our product. So, so is offers digitalized and decentralized identity solutions. And with INGO we have demonstrated how it can work in the construction industry, but it can be easily transformed, transferred our or applied to other scenarios and other sectors. It can also be fully integrated into existing systems. So that was from my part. Now I pass on to FCA and she will give you an outlook about the future of ingo. Thank you Aita.

So one of the next steps to enhance the capabilities of INGO is that we would like to integrate the customs inspection process means that we would like to just complete the whole chain from the contractor, the subcontractor, the worker accessing the construction side and also inspection. Right now the inspection is mainly done by the project leak, for example, from the contractor who scans the QR code of the worker. But we would also like to provide this to the customs offices.

So this is how an INWE could look like for the German soul, which is the customs offices in Germany, they would get an access code so they can enter a construction site and they could also scan the workers' QR codes. And again, this would save time and resources. This is a transparent document verification. It improves the correctness of the scans on construction sites or even the checks on construction sites. It's a safe data protection. And also an advantage is that it can be checked anytime, anywhere by just using a mobile phone.

And I said it before, we are really excited about the solution but we think it's not just for us. I would even say it's not just for the construction industry, it's for everywhere. Where we have challenges in access management, for example, at Linner we also use it for event management. So if there's a company event, we use INGO to get access to this. And if you would like to talk more about different use cases for ingo, just feel free and come to see us. He me after presentation.

And also if you would like to see a demo of INGO, just feel free and come to us and with this, thank you very much and we look forward to questions as there if there are any. Thank you very much Is possible. Is it possible to ask the Question? Yes. If if if you give me the question so I repeat it because you don't have a microphone but I if You, well it's a very simple question. I've got quite a loud voice. Probably easier if I say it and then they listen but you can repeat it as well. So Oh yeah, I'm sorry. 'cause you need it for the, For the livestream people. I apologize.

Okay, so my name's Andrew Ferguson, I'm from Australia now. In Australia we have a very, very strong union movement and the building and construction industries are dominated by this C-F-M-E-U.

All right, no contractor or subcontractor can enter any building project unless they are a union member and they have authorization. Do you have that situation, that problem with ego or do you not have any building unions controlling access to building sites? Not in Germany, not in that deep detail. Like in Germany, especially if it's a smaller construction site, you don't have any restrictions. Basically everybody can just walk on the construction site.

And this is also why we use INGO because sometimes we get the feedback from construction companies, I don't even know who's working on my construction site. So there are different levels, but no, that's in Germany, it's not that complicated. But You potentially involve the a union like in Australia if there was, if there Was a requirement. So the question was whether you could involve a union as an at additional attribute as an additional player stakeholder within the Potentially yes. Right. I'd like To talk you off, Yes.

Yeah, okay. As as she said. So please reach out to her and there are more questions and usually, and funnily enough, I have three times the same question out of the audience. The question is what do you do if a worker is refusing to install the app on their phone or to carry around the app on a phone? We have also the offline format provided for such a people that they don't have smartphones or they don't want to use INGO app. So we have also look at that challenge.

Yeah, it's also possible, for example, we also have like this multi-user function, our INGO app. So a team lead for example can administrate certain QR codes of their team members in the app. So to just overcome this challenge, So specifically if the subcontractor could also, they don't issue as verifiable credential all of these documents, but they also have all of these documents and afterwards, after the verification from the contractor is done, they are able to generate a QR code, an offline QR code and provided to the worker. Right?

So the QR code would then be scanned onsite by a different device. That exactly takes over the role of the active device. Exactly. The QR code has a specific is is a specific time of validation afterwards. They have to regenerate that, but yes, Right. Second question was, is it live? Do you use it on construction site, right? Right now Yes, it is live on construction site at Linner. We currently have around 40 to 45 subcontractors using the whole platform and we are onboarding two to three subcontractors every week now.

So we really want to keep this rolling and yeah, we have around 2000 projects in Germany and we want to use it on every single project. We are not there yet, but that's, we are in a currently rolling it out, right Because we have a panel on user experience with wallet apps just in two sessions right now. So the question is obvious, what is the feedback by those who use it? What is the, the feedback by the subcontractors by those who are entering the construction site with that? How do you, how do they react? What do you get of kind of feedback?

The Feedback is actually that they are surprised how easy it is to use, especially the platform where they upload the documents and all the people they like In our situation, the Linner group, we are the ones who are scanning the people on construction sites and everybody's saying how easy it is just to scan a QR code because as I said previously, they had to really know what to check and which documents to check and now it's just like show me your Q current scan it. So overall it's quite positive.

I can add to that we have implemented this solution in an agile format, so we had the feedback from the subcontractors and contractors all through the project and that was really a challenge to build an abstraction layer for the users and for the subcontractors and contractors. We talk here easily about VCs and digital identities, but it's not really an easy wording for the other people in the industry. So we had worked hard on that to build this abstraction layer for the users. Sounds good. So it really sounds like best practice and like a real life example.

Thank you very much to both of you for this great presentation and for these insights. Thank you.