Serious Games Case Study: Health & Safety Executive

As part of a series of short multimedia packages created for the HSE, I developed a virtual assessment package which allowed a trainee assessor to walk around a building site and look at potential dangers, flagging up any when seen.

The assessor could zero in on areas, for example they could:

• Check ladders are tethered
• Check scaffolding is correctly constructed and tagged
• Watch workmen on equipment

At the end of the assessment the package would score the trainee and then give them a number of ‘what if’ animations showing the damage that would happen if the dangers were not seen.

Serious Games Case Study: Ministry of Defence Police

This e-learning package developed for the MDP revolves around teaching effective ways of gathering evidence.

The e-learning comes in two forms:

•  a walkthrough showing how an experienced officer would respond to a crime scene
• a virtual reality assessment module which allows the student to traverse a crime scene (burglary) themselves to gather and protect evidence.

During the assessment officers would have to check the house to see if intruders were still present, then protect evidence whilst at the same time filling in all relevant details into their police pocket notebook for future use.

Serious Games Case Study: Royal Logistics Corp, Field Munitions Storage

Historically the RLC have trained recruits in finding the optimum locations for field storage sites by a mixture of classroom based training, paper based exercises and extremely expensive field exercises. The client identified a need to reduce training costs and at the same time provide an innovative solution that would engage the recruits.

Logica designed and implemented a virtual terrain simulator where recruits could drive around a 10 square kilometre area of land. The recruits would gain information about roads, rivers and urban conurbation, and then make informed judgements as to the best areas to place field storage sites. The simulation also required the recruits to define the optimum amounts of munitions to be placed at each site as well as defining travel routes for any personnel that would be removing storage from any one site.

Developed in Microsoft Visual Basic and using a commercial 3D engine, the application simulates many real world elements such as gravity if the car is in the air and skid marks on tight turns, all these help to engage the recruits and help keep their interest levels high. The use of a commercial 3D engine has also opened up the opportunity of accessing the simulation over the client’s secure intranet.

Following an initial version, Logica took the application further to provide tutors the option of creating and placing ad-hoc problems into the land area. These included bomb craters to block roads, along with hazards such as petrol stations and work sites.

The business benefits derived from the solution included:

• A customisable virtual environment
• A trained and motivated workforce
• Integrated assessment and certification
• A reduction in training delivery costs.