Customer cases
Equans Netherlands – installation company
The challenge
Safety is the number one priority at Equans, but toolbox meetings, courses and presentations follow one after the other, and it is precisely this repetition that causes some people to lose interest. There were also two practical constraints: the teams consist of experienced professionals with an average age of nearly fifty, so the solution had to work for those who do not deal with new technology on a daily basis. And with over 300 staff spread across projects and client sites, travelling to a fixed training centre was not an option. The objective was clear: to improve observational skills, so that people recognise risks more quickly and take action.
The result
In the six months following the training sessions, the number of reports in Equans’ safety app doubled. More reports do not mean poorer safety here; on the contrary: people are spotting risks and taking action. In addition, the sessions brought to light blind spots that had not emerged from any toolbox meeting or incident list, such as site documents, which only 3 per cent had noticed, and the chin strap, which 27 per cent had spotted after it had been mandatory for a year and a half. Equans linked these insights to the daily kick-off meetings and toolbox meetings, and is now exploring a wider roll-out within Equans Netherlands.
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Solina: a food company
The challenge
The safety policy was in place, the procedures were in place, and safety was being communicated. But a presentation in a meeting room is politely sat through and forgotten a week later. As long as staff do not actively spot and report unsafe situations, the bottom layer of the pyramid remains invisible. The objective was therefore not simply for people to know the rules, but something a little more difficult: people must learn to look.
The result
The immediate reaction was unanimous: everything went according to plan, the feedback was very positive and the scores were high. What happened next is even more interesting. More than a year later, Solina spontaneously indicated that they were still focusing on their own reports of unsafe situations. And because the in-house trainers delivered the sessions themselves following a half-day train-the-trainer course, no new training project requiring an extra day was needed in 2024.
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Algemene Bouw Maes (Van Roey): construction company
The challenge
To get eighty employees through a workplace drill in a single day, in two languages, in ninety-minute sessions that had to fit into the existing safety day programme. A real-life drill was not an option: that would have meant a day’s downtime, transport and staging scenarios that you deliberately have to get wrong. And a VR setup can only accommodate ten people at a time, whilst the groups consisted of twenty participants.
The result
All eighty employees took part, including the twenty-six French-speaking staff, who were given the full exercise rather than an abridged version. By running the VR session and the LEGO model side by side, nobody had to wait and everyone had completed two exercises after an hour and a half. Everything took place at a single location, without any equipment or cordoned-off areas, whilst every ongoing project continued as normal.
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Eiffage Energies Systèmes
The challenge
A thousand employees spread across projects and client sites throughout the country, across two language regions and across various business units. It wasn’t possible to bring everyone together on a single day, nor was it feasible to get everyone to travel to one location. This raised a second issue: organising such a week takes an enormous amount of time internally, from finding venues and arranging catering to sourcing trainers in two languages and keeping track of attendance for training allowances. This was precisely the work that Eiffage didn’t want to do itself, whilst ensuring that the content of the safety week remained entirely their own.
The result
All four days went ahead as planned, at four locations simultaneously, with participant numbers continuing to fluctuate right up until the day itself. The fact that, in retrospect, the discussion centred mainly on the content rather than the logistics is the best possible sign for an event of this scale. The satisfaction surveys were sent unfiltered to Eiffage, whilst the attendance lists and programmes went to HR, ensuring that every participant was eligible for their training allowance. And the collaboration continued: in the spring of 2025, further sessions for managers were organised.
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DENYS
The challenge
Just under five hundred staff members at a single QSHE day, a mix of blue-collar and white-collar workers, in four languages. In a VR setup, ten people can be in the same virtual environment at the same time, which means that 500 people would require 50 sessions. That simply wouldn’t fit into a single day. So the question wasn’t whether VR would make an impression, but whether everyone could receive a full exercise, without anyone being given a half-version simply because they happened to speak the wrong language or were in the last group.
The result
Six VR studios side by side in Denys’s own hall, 24 sessions spread throughout the day, and groups of twenty who worked in two halves at a time: one half in the virtual construction site, the other at a toolbox session on the same topic. No one had to wait; everyone did both. The 373 Dutch-speakers, 116 French-speakers and colleagues who speak English or Italian each received the same exercise in their own language. And because each session records what was seen and what was missed, Denys ended up with a snapshot of the entire organisation, complete with a score for each safety topic and each business unit, available for twelve months on the learning platform.
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