Abstract:

The projects carried out within the construction industry demand working in cross-disciplinary teams with a comprehensive variety of skills and knowledge. Nonetheless, in Colombia, there is a substantial educational gap between the staff involved in the construction process of a building. On the one hand, most professionals and technicians are qualified under a higher education system where they are taught about the fundaments, regulations and measures that must be implemented to decrease the hazards and risks while carrying on their work tasks.

Conversely, most of the trade workers in the construction sector are unskilled and sometimes only studied until the basic primary level. Traditionally, trade and craft workers are self-taught or trained empirically as apprentices of a trade by other empirical workers. Previous research and some case studies about this topic have demonstrated that skilled workers trained within a formal educational environment are more conscious of the risks associated with their daily activities. Therefore, they are more likely to implement measures to mitigate accidents than those that have learnt a trade empirically. Therefore, some empirical learners are more reluctant to break the loop of bad practices that increase the risks of accidentality.

Few building companies have addressed this educational gap, attempting to increase the skills of their workers as an investment in productivity and better-quality standards of the company and its projects. However, these strategies are financially unfeasible for most small contractors and companies within the sector without governmental support.

The analysis of the problem led to prioritising and delimiting the research into three aspects: the methods and resources used for training, mitigation, and control of the risk in the building site, focused mainly on enhancing and scaffolding the learning process of the staff. The literature review allowed the authors to identify affordable alternative methods to educate and train the workforce about risk and safety management. Previous research demonstrates that methodologies supported on standard devices like mobile phones and tablets and complemented by simple technologies such as apps and other free audio-visual resources are viable. Additional low-cost technologies such as cameras, drones and Arduino kits can increase the experience and understanding of trainees. Moreover, those can be linked to the conventional BIM software package used in design and construction.

The use of accessible technologies will allow us to emphasise more the quality of the content of the learning resources to bespoke it according to the skills demanded by their role. These training courses allow self-paced and tutored learning using new technologies that are more visual (3D models and videos) rather than descriptive (text and writing content) to break barriers set up by the technicality of the concepts. The objective of a training process using new technologies is to improve the trainee's comprehension of specific processes and actions that are complex and difficult to understand without visualisation of them in a real scenario.

Keywords:

Building Information Modelling – BIM –, educational gap, learning, digital media, construction safety management, 3D simulations, professional skills.