The Situation Engine: Experience Based Safety Training

Changing the safety behaviour of workers on site needs more than PowerPoint presentations and information sheets. Changing behaviour requires a change in attitude, and there is no better way to impress upon a worker the need to prioritise safety considerations than for them to experience how accidents happen, witness the consequences, and discuss appropriate responses with their peers.

The Situation Engine is a virtual reality training platform that applies advanced video game technology to drive change in on-site health and safety behaviour through a virtual personal experience of safe and unsafe work practices. The development was recently awarded the 2015 Chartered Institute of Builders International Premier Award for Innovation in Education and Training. The Situation Engine delivers an authentic first-person virtual site experience of exceptional visual and immersive quality, based on actual project models created by building professionals. Powerful analytics ensure all activities can be benchmarked and the conditions of each situation model adapted dynamically to suit individual trainer and learner needs.

The package has been developed over the past 5 years with significant research and development funding. It has been trialed successfully with more than 800 undergraduate construction management students at four Australian universities over a period of 3 years and fully implemented in the training facilities of a major contractor in Hong Kong.

The contemporary business model delivers open-source software and technical capability transfer to the client through in-house training. The Situation Engine is better viewed as a capability rather than a single product, and that capability is expanding rapidly on the back of major investments in VR technology by the likes of Facebook, Samsung, Google and Apple.

To find out more, watch the video below.