Dissertation Adoption and Effectiveness of Virtual Reality in Construction Safety

Adoption and Effectiveness of Virtual Reality in Construction SafetyConstruction professionals openly admit that the construction industry is inherently dangerous and the pursuit of safer training methods are often investigated. One relatively new safety training method is Virtual Reality (VR). Many construction professionals, notable quantity surveyors believe virtual reality provides a much safer training environment along with long term cost saving benefits. Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive technology utilizing computers and software to generate real-world situations. The technical term for this is Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) giving the person using the VR headset a sense of being by undertaking the sense and removes their cognizance of the real world. VR devices in the early days in the market were costly but recently with the popular concept of VR and major companies such as Samsung, HTC, Facebook and more have created VR headsets at lower and affordable prices. The virtual world simulated by this technology have open many paths for it to applied in an industry. One such industry is the construction industry. The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) depends heavily on computerised model and communication. Virtual reality technology provides the opportunity to improve and transform these approaches. Safety is a crucial issue in the construction industry. Ensuring a safe workspace for workers in construction needs the outmost effort from the all personnel involved in the construction. This dissertation will look into how virtual training simulators can impact the industry in terms of effectiveness, barriers in adopting this technology and the limitations faced by the software. Dissertation Objectives1. Investigate the health and safety risk in construction;2. Investigate issues when changing from traditional method to implementation of virtual reality;3. Investigate how virtual training can impact the construction industry;4. Investigate how safety in the construction site can be managed through design;5. Investigate the awareness and adoption of using virtual reality;6. To provide recommendation in using virtual training simulator.