According to a report of the United States Department of Labor, 4,821 workers died on the job in 2014. From those, 1 in 5 was a construction worker. There is a need to solve this situation with all tools that are available and one of them is as promising as it is innovative and trending: Virtual Reality (VR).
Virtual Reality uses a combination of computer hardware and software technologies to replicate a real physical environment so that the user can interact with this space. Although VR is mostly covered by the media in video gaming industry, it is developing beyond entertainment. VR construction technologies (ConTech), notably in Building Information Modelling (BIM), are emerging fast in the market. Many experienced construction companies are increasingly adopting VR technology to improve site safety, provide virtual training and thus reduce all relevant travel costs.
Major Hong Kong–based firm, Gammon Construction Limited has already started using virtual reality to train their employees. Safety Manager Kwok Wai-yin said:
“This training has successfully drawn trainees’ attention, stimulated their responses and attained mutual communication, which is more effective and convincing than lectures. Besides, it has changed their mode of thinking, boosted site safety and getting us closer to the zero harm goal.”
Furthermore, the leading global construction company Bechtel also rolls out a virtual reality safety training in order to take their training and education program to the next level. This goes along with the general industry trend of “the construction business [going] digital”, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
As another great example, earlier this year, the insurance company Texas Mutual released a free VR training app for iOS and Android devices, which featured four 360° safety instructional videos. While those videos are certainly useful to raise awareness for general safety rules, solutions like this cannot be used to point to specific danger zones on a construction site. Furthermore, the professional production of those clips can be very costly.
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Source: Medium