Portable construction site attendance system with TRB246 IoT gateway

Highlights

✔ AvtomatikaAz MMC, a construction company in Azerbaijan, enabled workers to clock in and out across temporary and frequently changing construction sites.

✔ Together with an outdoor biometric terminal, the TRB246 IoT gateway enables GNSS/GPS-aware attendance logging, employee data synchronisation, offline record buffering, and secure data transmission to the central FieldTrack workforce management platform.

✔ Teltonika TRB246 industrial gateway provides cellular connection where fixed internet infrastructure is unavailable or impractical, making the whole system easy to move between construction sites.

Attendance Tracking Challenges Across Changing Construction Sites

Construction companies operate in a highly dynamic workforce environment. Sites open, close, expand, relocate, and the same worker may clock in at a different location every week. For AvtomatikaAz MMC, operating across multiple sites in Azerbaijan, this made traditional attendance tracking difficult to manage.

Fixed attendance systems, such as wired terminals, site-specific servers, or permanent network connections, are hard to justify on temporary construction sites. They take time to install, create extra work when relocated, and often depend on internet infrastructure that rural or developing areas cannot provide.

Manual tracking was not a reliable alternative. Paper sign-in sheets and supervisor-managed records can be delayed, inaccurate, or difficult to verify, creating extra work for HR and limiting project managers’ visibility into who is on-site.

The client needed a self-sufficient attendance system that could move with each project, work without fixed infrastructure, remain reliable during connectivity outages, and allow employees to authenticate at different sites without repeated manual re-registration. To make this possible, the system also required a connectivity device that could provide stable, independent, and easily deployable network access wherever the project moved.

Topology

Teltonika IoT Gateway Enabling a Portable Attendance Kit

To solve the attendance tracking challenges in dynamic construction business environments, AvtomatikaAz MMC developed a compact attendance tracking kit comprising the TRB246 industrial IoT gateway and the outdoor biometric access terminal.

When a new construction site is opened, the attendance kit is physically moved to the location and installed on-site.  Once an employee authenticates at the terminal using a fingerprint, the terminal verifies the worker, captures a real-time photo, and creates an attendance event with the clock-in or clock-out data.

The biometric terminal is connected to the Teltonika TRB246 industrial IoT gateway, which provides 4G LTE connectivity and sends attendance data to the FieldTrack workforce management platform for reporting, payroll, compliance, and centralised visibility.

A custom C-language application running on the TRB246’s Linux-based OS manages communication with FieldTrack, including employee roster synchronisation, data formatting, API communication, retry logic, and offline record recovery. This enables employees to register once and authenticate at different active sites without repeated manual enrolment.

The TRB246’s GNSS/GPS data identifies the physical location of the kit, allowing each attendance record to be linked to the correct construction site, even when the same hardware is moved between locations.

If the cellular connection is lost, the terminal stores attendance events locally. Once the connection is restored, the application running on the TRB246 retrieves the buffered records and uploads them automatically, keeping attendance data complete during temporary network outages. To reduce the likelihood of such interruptions, TRB246’s dual SIM and failover help maintain connectivity in areas with variable mobile coverage.

The complete kit can be transported to a new construction site, installed, powered up, and used within minutes, maximising hardware utilisation. No fixed internet connection, local server setup, or manual site reconfiguration is required.

Looking to track employee attendance across temporary or remote worksites without relying on fixed infrastructure? Get in touch with our team, and we’ll help you find the right IoT connectivity devices for your workforce management solution.