Every year, the Danish construction business loses billions due to poor cooperation between the professional groups and insufficient planning at the construction sites.
The learning game Benspænd (Trip Up) is an attempt to improve the construction sites of the future. The game is tailored to make cooperation and planning permanent parts of the educational programmes of the construction business.
Now aspiring construction workers, engineers, and architects can learn important lessons about risk management, organisation, planning, leadership and last but not least cooperation. And all through en entertaining computer game.
In Benspænd (danish for Obstructions) the participants are faced with the responsibility of rebuilding Carlsberg’s old bottling plant “Tap E”. Their task is to converting it into "Dansehallerne”– the largest centre for modern dancing in Northern Europe.
In the game the participants must handle the construction project’s schedule, quality and economy, the many different stakeholders in the process not to mention critical decisions regarding the design of the building.
The participants work together in teams and each team controls its own construction project. During the game each team challenges the opposing teams by creating trip ups; the old building has unexpected defects, deliveries are delayed, the workmen do not factor in the next step in the process, the engineer and the architect don’t agree, user needs must be accounted for etc.
The team that is capable of making the best situational analysis of their construction site, while protecting itself from teasing, taunts and being tripped up, wins.
The learning game provides insight into a number of challenges that emerge on construction sites every day. The participants become aware of the complexity going into a construction process while they, at the same time, learn how to manoeuvre in this complexity.
The game is a result of the development initiative Renovering 2010 which is a partnership between The Landowners' Investment Foundation and Realdania.
Workz has designed the game and the education in connection with it in collaboration with DPU and Centre for Leadership in Construction. Version 3 did the technical implementation.
You can read more about the game, download additional material about the issue and watch a video at www.benspaend.dk.
