WorkSafe CASE STUDY: Virtual reality welding health and safety training experience

WorkSafe’s Exposure Risk Management Team and Company-X worked to create an engaging educational experience for use at a series of nine national Carcinogens and Airborne Risks roadshows. One of WorkSafe’s aims is to engage with those responsible for health and safety in workplaces across the country.

WorkSafe is New Zealand’s primary workplace health and safety regulator. The organisation has more than 550 staff working to lift health and safety performance and supports New Zealanders to return home from work healthy and safe.

WorkSafe had broad requirements when its team first talked to Company-X. These were refined as WorkSafe collaborated with Company-X's consultants to settle on a VR welding fume risk identification and control implementation experience.

The biggest challenge was getting the interactions right. Making the experience feel intuitive to users with no prior VR experience was a priority. Little things, like turning buttons into objects in the VR world that the user could press with their hands, just like the real world, made all the difference to its effectiveness.

There were also some challenges in getting this complex environment working within the limits of the Meta Quest2 headset. Careful consideration went into the environment design, and what graphical features to use to maintain a smooth experience for users.

A few ideas were dropped to keep on time and within budget, but the end solution provided WorkSafe with a brief yet comprehensive demonstration tool with which to engage with health and safety people across the country.

Company-X developer Sebastian Dusterwald built a VR welding application using Unity on a Meta Quest 2 headset.

Working through a series of examples and assessments, users experience realistic challenges within a virtual welding workshop. Users are charged with making the right decisions to mitigate or alleviate risks, all within a set time and budget. Unity allowed Dusterwald to get early prototype builds out very quickly to iterate on. This is a key requirement working with bleeding edge virtual reality technology when the best way to do things is often undefined.

The VR welding workshop experience created an accessible format for people to understand risk management in a realistic virtual environment. Showcased at the roadshows in September and October 2022, the experience was well received by attendees.

"[WorkSafe's virtual reality health and safety training] is really good. It is very simple and effective. A really good training aid."

PPL Plastic Solutions Health, Safety, Environment & Quality Coordinator Jackie Uy