The Hire Association Europe HAE has won a prestigious award in the Commitment to Skills category of the PLANTWORX Innovation Awards for its use of virtual reality and oculus rift technology for Health & Safety training. The award was presented at a lunch held at Carlton Terrace House in London on Thursday 6th April. Attendees included judges, sponsors and members of the PLANTWORX team, along with representatives of the press.
PLANTWORX is a show shaped by the industry and its innovation awards recognise those forward-thinking exhibitors who are helping to improve the efficiency and safety of construction sites. The HAE entry clearly demonstrates the association’s commitment to ensuring access to training and safety guidance is more readily available to a wider audience which impressed the judges. Particularly impressive given that the organisers stated that it was a tough category with a record number of entries.
Included within, the now award winning, training programme are working at height and cut-off saw modules. HAE, in partnership with the University of the West of England (UWE) have adopted the latest in gaming and VR technology to produce a risk assessment approach to fault finding. Users must first select the correct PPE for the job in hand, identify areas of risk and undertake a series of multiple choice questions to complete the module.
Commenting on the award win, HAE managing director, Graham Arundell said: “We’re absolutely thrilled to receive this accolade for, what we believe, to be the future of training in the hire industry. Richard Whiting, his team and our colleagues at UWE have worked tirelessly to get the training up and running and to win an award when we’re still in the development stage not only makes us proud but very optimistic about its success in the future.”
New training modules are already in the pipeline including: dust, noise and HAVS and other product groups like breakers, angle grinders and diamond drilling. The HAE is committed to growing the number of modules over the next two to three years.
PLANTWORK 2017 takes place FROM 6th-8th June 2017 at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground, Leicestershire, HAE will be demonstrating its virtual reality training software at the show in Pavilion A, stand T2.