Use of Virtual Reality for Instruction and Training of Young Construction Workers

Falls from scaffolds are one of the most frequent causes of fatal or seriousinjuries in building and construction setting. To prevent such injuries, theavailability of effective education and training methods and tools is ofparamount importance. The one-year long EU (SAFE) project Vecwit(Virtual Environment for Construction Workers Training and Instruction)has been conceived to set up a virtual reality (VR) environment that shallserve as an educational tool for construction workers' education andtraining. Specifically, the project had two main goals: to improve trainees'risk perception and expertise on safe behaviours while working onscaffolds. The project foresaw four different steps. First, a preliminarydefinition of the technological platform was made. Second, task analysiswas performed to get a model of the more risk situations and define thescenarios to be implemented. Third, a VR prototype with the system's mainfeatures was developed. Finally, an ergonomic study was designed toevaluate both system's usability and training effectiveness. The studyinvolved two groups of eight young workers (novices and alreadyexperienced ones) who had to perform the following tasks:• filling in a pre-test questionnaire. Such a questionnaire was devised forassessing familiarity and attitude toward VR systems;• task oriented exploration of the VR prototype. The exploration tookplace in presence of an experimenter who took note of the user's errorsand other problems of interaction (e. g. get lost in virtual space)with thesystem;• filling in a post-test questionnaire. Such questionnaire was made up ofmultiple choice questions for the assessment of training goals(improvement of trainees' risk perception and expertise on safebehaviours).The ergonomic study resulted in a number of findings related toeducational effectiveness and specific usability problems related to VRsystems.