Purpose
Accidents resulting from poorly planned or setup work environments are a major concern within the construction industry. While traditional education and training of personnel offer well-known approaches for establishing safe work practices, serious games in virtual reality (VR) are increasingly being used as a complementary approach for active learning experiences. By taking full advantage of data collection and the interactions possible in the virtual environment, the education and training of construction personnel improves by using non-biased feedback and immersion.
Design/methodology/approach
This research presents a framework for the generation and automated assessment of VR data. The proposed approach is tested and evaluated in a virtual work environment consisting of multiple hazards. VR requires expensive hardware, technical knowledge and user acceptance to run the games effectively. An effort has been made to transfer the advantages VR gives to a physical setup. This is done using a light detection and ranging sensing system, which collects similar data and enables the same learning experiences.
Findings
Encouraging results on the participants’ experiences are presented and discussed based on actual needs in the Danish construction industry. An outlook presents future avenues towards enhancing existing learning methods.
Practical implications
The proposed method will help develop active learning environments, which could lead to safer construction work stations in the future, either through VR or physical simulations.
Originality/value
The utilization of run-time data collection and automatic analysis allows for better personalized feedback in the construction safety training. Furthermore, this study investigates the possibility of transferring the benefits of this system to a physical setup that is easier to use on construction sites without investing in a full VR setup.
Whereas Lean Construction is a state-of-the-art practice in construction, associated simulation games in academic or professional education still rely on manual data input and analysis. Proposed is a digital learning platform that teaches the concept of lean construction using an active, hands-on serious gaming environment involving multiple players simultaneously in virtual reality. The novelty is to share rapid feedback with the participants while playing the game. Findings through testing demonstrate they benefit from the run-time data analysis and more effectively understand lean principles to eliminate waste, allow collaboration, and optimize quality in the value-added building chain.
The construction industry is suffering from a high rate of accidents that significantly affect the overall performance of projects. Compared to the conventional safety training methods, Virtual Reality (VR) games offer a more immersive and interactive learning experience for the participants. However, training scenarios in most of the existing VR games lack complex tasks and the realistic environment required for actual construction. This work proposes a conceptual framework for dynamically updating VR training games through information streaming from the digital twins. The training scenarios in VR games are automatically created from the project intent information, project status knowledge, safety regulations, and historical knowledge provided by the digital twins. Therefore, construction workers can be trained in realistic training environments with relevant tasks they soon afterwards pursue. Dynamic VR training is expected mutually beneficial for enhanced digital twins and periodic construction safety management. Inadequate technology readiness level of the construction industry and difficulty in collecting good quality data are some of the major challenges for implementing this framework.
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