Operation and and maintenance of built assets: A pathway towards individualised training experiences

Workforce health and safety (H&S) in the construction sector is a global concern. The construction sector has one of the highest fatal injury rates in both the developed and the developing world (Kassem et al., 2017). Efforts to improve the H&S performance in the construction sector are plentiful. However, until recently studies have mainly focused on H&S issues on the construction site. Facilities management and in particular the operation and maintenance of built assets has a much higher rate of injury and illness when compared to all other fields of employment (Wetzel and Thabet, 2018). More effort should be dedicated to address H&S risks at this stage. Safety learning and training, as a proactive strategy to improve the H&S performance of the construction sector, has received significant attention in recent years. Studies proposing new approaches for H&S learning and training have proposed a number of approaches that are characterized by a varying degree of 'virtualisation' ranging from pure reality, through augmented and mixed reality, to full virtual reality. While the degree of 'virtualisation' of the proposed approaches is an important variable to consider, the extent of 'personalisation' enabled by such approaches is key. Personalisation in learning and training refer to experiences which are tailored to the specific needs of the individual according the job role and to the specific characteristics of the context (company or otherwise) in which the individual is required to complete his/her tasks.This emerging trend is being driven by innovators on both the demand side (e.g. forward-looking clients and operators innovating in health H&S learning and training to meet ambitious H&S performance) and on the supply side (e.g. specialised learning and training providers, and technology providers). This paper presents the outcome from the first stage of a study aiming to develop an individualised training solution for the construction and facilities management (FM) domain.