The Samsung C&T Safety Academy is an educational experience center for employees and guests to learn about safety awareness and preparedness. At the Safety Experience Center, visitors can experience emergency first aid training, a fire evacuation simulation, an earthquake simulation, and a construction site experience zone.
The Samsung C&T “Safety Academy” motto, ‘Awareness, Behavior, and Culture,’ perfectly encapsulates its strong commitment to safety. Established in 2015 and recently extended with an additional building, the Safety Academy provides safety awareness education to Samsung C&T employees and partners. The Academy was recently the subject of a YouTube video featuring Jonathan Yiombi, a popular entertainer in South Korea, who experienced its comprehensive safety curriculum firsthand.
This article will explore the hands-on safety education and experiences that the Academy provides and give an insight into basic emergency safety tips. The Samsung C&T Engineering and Construction (E&C) Group prioritizes safety for its workers and employs a range of safety initiatives to ensure safe and healthy construction sites.
What is the Samsung C&T Safety Academy?
The Samsung C&T Safety Academy is an experiential center where employees and partners of the company can learn about safety awareness and experience emergency education in its experience zones. The Safety Academy is divided into two buildings: a lecture building for classroom learning and an experience building for emergency simulations. Samsung C&T considered all aspects of the building design to maximize safety learning opportunities for people who visit the facility.
The Samsung C&T Safety Academy Experience Center
The Safety Academy’s experience center provides emergency preparedness education for employees. In the experience center building, there is an emergency first aid training zone, an earthquake simulation experience zone, a fire evacuation simulation zone, and a construction site experience zone. At each zone, employees can receive detailed information about what to do in emergency situations, preparing to be proactive in a real emergency.
Emergency First Aid Experience Zone
The first experience zone that Jonathan visited was the emergency first aid experience center, where he learned the basics of CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation). CPR is a skill that you hope you never need to use, but is a lifesaving skill to know. Samsung C&T employees and partners can learn CPR and basic emergency first aid skills at the Safety Academy and practice with an experienced professional to build knowledge and confidence.
Emergency CPR Steps
- Check responsiveness
- Call for help
- Open airway
- Check breathing
- Start chest compressions
- Continue CPR until ambulance arrives
- Administer AED if available
Earthquake Simulation Zone
The Safety Academy’s Earthquake Safety simulation zone is a room designed to resemble a kitchen. Here, visitors can experience simulated earthquakes at varying levels of severity in a familiar setting. During the simulation, visitors are tasked with completing safety procedures to practice for a real emergency. This allows participants to learn how to respond to emergency situations in an environment that closely mimics a place they may be in the event of an earthquake.
Fire Evacuation Experience Zone
The Safety Academy’s Fire Evacuation Simulation Zone is set up inside a realistic-looking Seoul subway carriage. During the video, Jonathan is asked if he knows the most important step of evacuating from a fire. To his surprise, the answer was ‘sending a signal’ to others that there is a fire. This ensures that the people around you can be alerted to the situation.
At the fire evacuation zone, Jonathan and his Safety Academy guide experienced a simulation of a fire evacuation. During this exercise, fire alarms sounded, and the pair had to activate the “subway” emergency doors and successfully escape to freedom using the following tips as a guide:
Construction Site Experience Zone
The final experience zone Jonathan visits is the construction site experience zone. At this zone, Samsung C&T employees can learn the importance of personal safety equipment on-site. While wearing a helmet and safety boots, a weight drops from above to experience how it feels. This exercise aims to bring employees awareness of the importance of safety equipment on construction sites. Jonathan described the weight dropping onto his safety boots as if “he has no feet” because the boots are so protective.
After learning about safety equipment, Jonathan went outside to experience a falling scenario. Falling is one of the biggest risks on construction sites. This experience helps make workers aware of the risks to help them take safety precautions in their work and prevent incidents.
The Samsung C&T E&C Group’s Commitment to Safety through its Safety Academy
Samsung C&T’s Safety Academy is dedicated to enhancing safety management and boosting employee safety awareness. The facility offers hands-on, experiential training alongside various job-specific courses designed to prevent accidents and promote a strong safety culture.
After opening the Safety Academy in 2015, the Group aimed to provide education to about 5,000 Samsung C&T executives and employees and heads of partner companies each year. A Samsung C&T official said, “We will continue to provide education and spare no investment in order to establish a safety-first culture and achieve zero accidents at our sites.”
Read about Samsung C&T’s safety culture in this blog post: ‘Safety First’ is more than a slogan at Samsung C&T: It’s part of the culture’ or read about how Samsung C&T keeps construction sites made safer by stop-work authority.
If you wish to see Jonathan experience the four zones at Samsung C&T’s Safety Academy, watch the video below! Please note that the video is in Korean and does not have English subtitles available.
