Virtual Reality and Language model integrated training modules for skill enhancement in construction safety

Despite the construction sector's significant potential for growth and importance across the globe, it faces several fundamental challenges related to skill gaps. For example, an overwhelming 81% of the current workforce, 71 million in the construction sector, is considered poorly skilled in India.

In Australia, according to Master Builders reports, 85% of its members struggle to find suitably qualified workers, with 66% identifying this as the biggest issue facing;the industry. The lack of suitable skills in the workforce creates several significant challenges for the industry in terms of poor-quality execution and lack of safety at sites, ultimately contributing to project delays and cost overruns.

While no one solution can address the mammoth task of skill development in the Indian and Australian construction sector, the role of state-of-the-art digital technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), has been well recognized. Although the immense potential of VR technology in imparting construction-related training for safety and quality has recently been recognized in several;academic studies, significant work needs to be done to scale the impact that VR technology can deliver. Many essential aspects, such as enabling VR to make site-specific/trade-specific training programs, quick development of the VR training scenarios representative of Indian and Australian conditions, and affordable training programs for small and medium construction companies, need to be studied. Moreover, a hybrid training strategy, where VR can complement instead of replacing the existing industry training programs, needs to be developed and rigorously evaluated.

The current project will aim to develop new VR modules with more interactive capabilities, such as through integration with conversation capability supported by AI-based large language models, in multiplayer collaborative VR games for situations such as lifting. It will aim to assess the effectiveness of various interactive capabilities in VR-based quality training modules for construction practitioners compared to traditional training methods.