Construction file photo

A company with local connections that designs apps to help non-English speaking workers communicate in the workplace has made some updates.

Need2Say is an Irvine-based company behind mobile apps Need2Say Learning and Need2Say Chat meant to help employers manage risk, improve productivity and increase profitability.

The apps allow for real-time, effective translation for English, Spanish and several other languages. It relies on human-powered translation during work hours and allows workers to share photos of the worksite and send their supervisors messages if they have questions.

Oscar Garcia, founder and CEO of Need2say, has a background in linguistics and is the son of an immigrant construction worker who suffered numerous injuries at work through the years — as well as missed career opportunities — due to language barriers.

Garcia started working on the app right before the end of the pandemic and officially launched in 2022.

Last January, Garcia said the company was working with eight construction companies, including Turner Construction, which has a presence in Fresno.

Today, Need2Say is working with about 20 general contractors and has developed some new features.

One of the new features includes “Real Time Voice Translation,” which allows a safety manager or foreman to translate safety training presentations, and to save the recording to be shared with workers and for compliance under the Occupational Safety and health Administration.

It can also be used for one-on-one conversation with workers.

“It’s getting a lot of traction right now, and we did a lot of research to come up with this feature,” Garcia said.

He said Need2Say has applied for a patent for technology that allows workers to access company safety manuals without the materials being accessed by any other artificial intelligence systems.

Garcia said that construction firms don’t share their safety manuals online, and AI chat systems like ChatGPT can’t create one that would be specific for a certain company.

The new feature will give workers safety information, which will then be followed up by a question from local experts in the area to make sure laborers are performing safety work correctly.

Garcia said the company is expanding from servicing the construction industry to serving manufacturing companies, as they have the same need.

“Selling to general contractors takes time,” Garcia said. “At the beginning they want to go test it out. They know that they have the need, but since they haven’t used something like this, they want to test it out and see how it works,” he said.

Firms want to make sure that Need2Say safely handles workers data. The app doesn’t access data such as names and doesn’t access the company’s cloud data.

They also developed an alert system for emergency situations such as fires or tornado warnings in the Midwest.

Garcia said the company is planning to aggressively hit the market, as the last two years were mostly for research.
They recently hired their first sales representative who is already helping them close deals.

Garcia plans to expand to other industries including health care, hospitality and agriculture.

“We are getting to raise the C round of funding, but we want it to have the traction and check all the boxes to raise all the money,” he said.