Susanne Tepe

Designing a game for occupational health and safety in the construction industry

Safety in the construction industry is important because people continue to be injured on construction sites. To address this, the Australian construction industry and its regulator, the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, have required that anyone who intends to work on a construction site must complete an Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) construction induction process. One quite complex section of the construction induction training deals with the identification of hazards and the management of hazards through controls to prevent workers from injury. There is a multitude of worksite hazards and many OH&S controls. A key challenge for OH&S training is to engage learners. Serious Games are a promising vehicle to engage learners and enhance their retention of important concepts. This paper reports on the design decisions and the development of an informative and entertaining game, which is intended to motivate users to learn about workplace hazards. The game is also intended to help users retain their knowledge of workplace hazards and their management, and to assist with knowledge transfer into the real world.

Trouble tower game demo

The Construction Industry has one of the highest rates of injury and fatality in Australia and across the world. A key challenge for OH&S training is to engage learners. Construction students tend to be experiential learners and class room teaching is often not engaging for them. In this project we developed a computer game aimed to motivate students to learn about construction sites hazards and their management via application of OH&S controls. The exhibition showcases the game.