Safety Training for Scaffolding and Formwork Construction by Using Virtual Environment

Abstract

Scaffolding and formwork activities are the most frequent construction activities that exist in almost every construction project. Common site accidents such as falling from a height, formwork collapses frequently occur during these activities. Previous literature highlight that human-based factors are the major causes that lead to the scaffolding and formwork accidents. In this sense, safety training is crucial to prevent these accidents by improving the safety skills of trainees. Knowing that virtual technologies based trainings have a great potential to provide an effective training, we developed a virtual safety training tool called V-SAFE.v2 which simulates the scaffolding and formwork activities. V-SAFE.v2 supports both single and multi-user training scenarios. In the training stage, trainees interact with the autonomous agents to learn the essentials of the tool and the scaffolding and formwork construction skills. In the testing stage, trainees enter into the virtual environment to test their skills and safety knowledge that acquired during the training stage. Finally, trainees receive feedback based on their safety behavior at the end of testing stage. The preliminary results of this study demonstrate that V-SAFE.v2 is an effective safety training tool for the scaffolding and formwork activities.