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.