How Shell is Using VR Training for HSSE Assessment

At a past Industrial IMMERSIVE week, we got to hear from James Johnson of Shell and Tom Symonds of Immerse about how Shell is currently and plans to continue using VR for training, especially in Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) initiatives. 

Shell has a large offshore workforce, and the demographics are shifting, with new and inexperienced workers coming in to replace experienced workers who are retiring. In the dangerous environments inherent in the energy industry, Shell (and the industry at large) has stringent standards for training and assessment. 

Generally, assessing a new employee requires an experienced worker to stop what they’re doing to do the evaluation. The experienced operator, who could be actually going out and fixing stuff or doing things, has to manually oversee and report on performance. This is costly and distracting. 

Training activities leading up to evaluation—travel, overtime, equipment usage—are also costly. James Johnson from Shell’s Learning and Organization Development Department said, “If we can deliver training where people are working, in the flow of their training or in the flow of their work, that has a significant cost benefit for us.”

That’s why Shell has been investing in VR training, partnering with Immerse. Johnson said, “We need to think of different ways of training people in a much more cost-competitive environment. A lot of factors play into why we arrived at looking at virtual reality and other technologies to deliver training in a more effective and efficient way.”

Costs are an important factor in Shell deciding to jump into VR training, but they’re also excited for the opportunity to track data and measure outcomes. As of now, there isn’t much concrete data on the efficacy of VR training (but early signs point to high efficacy for ideal applications). 

Tom Symonds, CEO of Immerse, said, “There's not a great deal of efficacy data out there. Feedback tends to be more anecdotal.” As early adopters, enterprises are taking the leap based on the possibilities and collecting the efficacy data along the way to adapt and learn. 

Some of the benefits of VR training are less measurable. For example, Johnson discussed one of the most unique training scenarios where VR might come into play. “One of the most dangerous things we do, outside of an operational environment, is strap people into a helicopter, drop them into a swimming pool, tip it upside down, and then ask them to get out.”

That training exercise is dangerous and costly. While VR can’t necessarily replicate an underwater environment, Johnson said, “There's a lot of stuff we do around process, safety, and behavior—pretty hazardous situations, but with minimal risk.” VR training can help workers practice responding to dangerous scenarios and learn to safely navigate hazardous environments without having to put them in those risky situations. 

Shell is still in the early stages of implementing VR training and assessment. “Managing VR content and trying to herd our organization, not just on the learning side, but also the IT side, has been a challenge,” Johnson said. There are access, security, privacy, data, hardware, and software considerations that all come into play. Shell has been working with Immere to implement, scale, and measure VR training as valuable applications arise. 

Want to continue your learning? Watch the entire session on demand now. 

There’s more where this came from. Learn about other industrial VR and immersive tech use cases at the 2023 Industrial IMMERSIVE Week, August 28-30, in Houston, Texas. Subscribe to get updates.