Industry 4.0 in Nigeria: Key Drivers for Adopting Virtual Reality in Construction Workers’ Safety Training

Abstract

The Nigeria construction sites faces extremely high accident rates, which point to low safety performance, mainly resulting from training methods. However, the industry 4.0 technologies progression gave rise to the use of Virtual Reality (VR) for improved safety training on construction sites. Virtual Reality (VR) uses virtual information on a real-life scenario. The technology allows the use of three-dimensional (3D) models on real-time videos in a 3D visualization environment for effective safety performance on construction sites. Thus, provides a risk-free environment with worthy potential in ensuring construction workers are made more aware of their hazard identification capability on a construction site. Accordingly, this studies echoed the drivers for espousal of VR for workers’ safety training in Nigeria construction sites. A sample of 200 experienced construction professionals, out of which 150 feedbacks from Quantity Surveyors, Engineers, Architects, and Project managers were retrieved. Subsequently, the responses from the construction professionals shows the dispersal of a data set. However, the significant values of Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk exhibit p >0.05, thus the data was assessed to be normally distributed, and acceptable for statistical analysis. Besides, the RII results shows that on average, six drivers for adopting virtual reality for workers’ safety training in construction sites were identified. The EFA results shows that the drivers can be grouped into four; modernized safety features, regulatory and fiscal tools, user preferences inclusion, and performance optimization. Overall, the results indicates that to drive VR technology, workers should be adequately trained in safety awareness and critical decision making. Hence, it was recommended that the construction organization should espouse VR technology, and after-action review should be adopted in order to achieve effective safety training in construction sites.