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Client delivery / Industrial safety training

Training a procedure you cannot safely get wrong.

A virtual reality training application for anhydrous ammonia transfer — connecting and disconnecting a road tanker — delivered for Nutrien Ag Solutions with Myriad Global Media. Three modes: train, practice, assess. The interesting part is not the simulation. It is that every safety check the trainee performs, or skips, comes back as structured data.

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Anhydrous ammonia transfer, connect and disconnect modules

Train, practice and assess modes from one procedure model

Per-step competency data, not just a completion flag

Why virtual reality earns its cost here

You cannot rehearse a mistake on a real tanker.

Anhydrous ammonia is labelled an inhalation hazard for good reason. The transfer procedure is full of checks whose value only shows up when they are skipped: the direction of the wind, whether your exits are clear, whether the safety water tank is actually full. Classroom training can describe them. A real tanker cannot safely let someone get them wrong and find out.

That gap is the case for VR in industrial safety, and it is narrower than vendors usually claim. It applies when the procedure is physical, the sequence matters, and the consequence of error is severe enough that nobody will let a trainee experience it. Ammonia transfer sits squarely inside all three.

Physical sequence

The order is the safety

Checks come before connection, connection before valves, valves before transfer. A trainee who learns the steps out of order has learned the wrong procedure.

Severe consequence

No safe way to fail for real

The failure modes are chemical exposure and uncontrolled release. There is no low-stakes version of this on live plant.

Measurable

Every check is observable

Did they look at the wind sock? Did they check the water level? In a headset those are answerable questions. On a real site they are a supervisor’s recollection.

The procedure is the product

Built from a step sheet, not a storyboard.

The application was specified as a signed-off step model: each step carrying its scene, description, voiceover and captions, on-screen UI, the assistance offered, the action required, sound, transition, and — the column that made the product work — what to measure.

Site checks

Before anything is connected

Check the wind sock and read the direction. Confirm exits are open for egress based on that wind direction. Verify the safety water tank is present, full and clean. Open the lock boxes holding the hose end valves — yellow for vapour, orange for liquid.

PPE

Dressed correctly, item by item

The trainee meets a dummy in basic overalls with the correct PPE laid out beside it, and has to equip each piece. Ammonia suit, steel cap boots, water bottle, and the portable query and emergency stop are each tracked separately rather than as one “wore PPE” tick.

Connection

Prove it before you trust it

Open the valves slowly, check the gasket and connection for leaks, then open both fully. Prove the connection and check again — because a hammer that did not tighten properly and a gasket that did not seat properly both look fine until they do not.

Disconnection and egress

The site is not safe until you have left it

The disconnect module ends where a real shift does: verifying site security before leaving, starting with removing the wheel chocks from the truck.

The part worth copying

Assessment as structured data, not a completion tick.

Most corporate VR training reports one number: did they finish. This was specified so that each step declares what it captures and in what type — and those declarations are unusually specific.

Attention

Has the user looked at the wind sock?

Recorded as a boolean. A trainee can walk past a check and complete the module; the data still knows they did not perform it.

Compound checks

Three booleans for one tank

Looked at the water tank, checked the water level, checked it was clean. Modelled as three separate observations, because a trainee who glances at a tank has not inspected it.

Degree, not just fact

Valves opened as a percentage

“Open slowly, then fully” is not a binary, so it is not stored as one. The valve state is captured as a percentage alongside the leak check.

Position and time

Were they where they should be, and when?

Location checks carry a timestamp, so the sequence and pace of a session are reconstructable rather than inferred.

Identity

Sessions belong to a person

User login with session start time, so a record attaches to an individual and a date rather than to a headset.

Three modes, one model

Train, practice, assess

The same procedure model drives guided teaching, unguided rehearsal and scored assessment. Assistance — highlighting the wind sock, the exits, the lock boxes — is a per-step property that the mode turns down rather than a separate build.

What this proves: when the assessment model is designed alongside the procedure rather than bolted on afterwards, a training build stops being a memorable experience and starts being defensible evidence of competency — which is what a safety manager actually needs to sign.

Case study decision record

The commercial case, in one view.

Client: Nutrien Ag Solutions, delivered with Myriad Global Media.
Business challenge: Anhydrous ammonia transfer is a physical, order-dependent procedure whose safety checks matter most when they are skipped — and which cannot be practised wrong on live plant.
What Simam Digital built: A Unity VR training application covering the connection and disconnection modules, with train, practice and assess modes, guided assistance, site and PPE checks, valve and leak proving, and per-step competency capture.
Platform: PC VR via SteamVR, developed and demonstrated on HTC Vive Pro hardware.
Important product decisions: Specify the assessment model in the same sheet as the procedure. Decompose compound checks into separate observations. Store degree where the real action has degree. Make assistance a per-step property that modes attenuate, rather than building three applications.
Credible outcome: A delivered training application whose session output is structured competency data against a signed-off procedure, rather than a completion flag.
Recommended next engagement: Feed the session data into whatever system already holds training records, and review which checks trainees most often skip — that list is usually the most valuable thing a build like this produces.

Have a procedure that is dangerous to teach and expensive to get wrong?

The build is worth commissioning when the sequence is physical, the consequence is severe, and someone needs evidence that a person can actually do it. If that is not your situation, a video is cheaper and we will say so.

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