Skip to main content
23rd World Congress on Safety and Health at Work
Times are shown in your local time zone GMT

University of Wollongong - Developing a chatbot for sharing construction safety knowledge

Innovator Showcase

Innovator Showcase

11:00 am

29 November 2023

Exhibition Hall - Innovator Showcase Stage

Innovator Showcase

Talk Description

The construction industry is a major high-risk industry, having a disproportionately high rate of recorded accidents worldwide (ILO, 2015). A key well known cause of accidents in construction is the lack of safety knowledge. 

Construction workers usually obtain safety knowledge from two main avenues, which is through professional construction education and training and seeking knowledge, and cues from supervisors or co-workers. Studies have shown that they prefer the latter. 
Yet, while levels of communication among construction workers are high in terms of sharing tacit knowledge, the quality of safety information needed to address a safety problem is questionable. On the other hand, majority of trainers involved in facilitating and impacting explicit safety knowledge in construction workers lack the relevant experience in the industry to illustrate the practicality of the concepts (Wilkins, 2011).

The rapid advancement in mobile information and communication technologies offers new possibilities. However, convincing construction companies to embrace its use and implementation has proven to be a difficult task in comparison to the automotive and aerospace industries (Duyshart et al., 2003). Among several reasons, attitudinal and cultural barriers pose as major impediments. 

Chatbots offer chat interfaces in the form of intelligent conversational agents. The most frequently reported motivation for using chatbots is the productivity. From the Uses and Gratifications theory (Nabi & Oliver, 2009), construction workers are most likely use a particular medium based on social and psychological needs or gratifications. 

We developed a Safety Chatbot that supplies instant solutions to construction workers queries. This Bot is integrated with Telegram to alleviate the transaction costs and mental costs involved in switching to an all-new technology. 

This presentation will provide an overview and a demonstration of the chatbot.

Presenters