ASSESSING THE IMPACTS OF VIRTUAL REALITY FOR WORKERS’ SAFETY TRAINING ON CONSTRUCTION SITES

Abstract

The construction sites in Nigeria faces tremendously high hazard rates traceable to poor workers’ safety training.  However, the emergence of industry 4.0 technologies has given rise to the use of technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR) for improved safety training on construction sites. The study thus assess the impact of VR for workers’ safety training on construction sites. A purposive sample of 150 responses from Quantity Surveyors, Engineers, Architects, and Project managers were retrieved. Normality test and Relative Importance Index (RII) was applied to check distribution of the data set and garner the respondents’ perceptions. Also, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was carried out to reveal the major structure existent within the variables. The results shows that on average, respondents find risk identification, improve workers’ capacity to deal with unanticipated hazards, enable proper communication of safety-related information and knowledge to the stakeholders, reduce human error, enable immersive visualization of construction projects, reduction of accidents and hazards on construction sites, enable quality decision-making, enhance proper safety planning protocols, reduce construction time, and reduce construction cost to be relatively important, implying a positive perception among respondents. Moreover, the EFA results identified four component groups: communication and collaboration, safety management, resource management, and quality control and planning. The study thus provides a wide-ranging discussion of the impacts of employing VR for workers’ safety training on construction sites.