“Alta Quota” Digital Game for Autostrade per l’Italia.

A gaming approach for promoting safety awareness, putting learners in the driving seat.

Alongside the country’s other licensed operators, Autostrade per l’Italia operates some 3000 km of motorways—approx. 50% of the entire national toll road network, spanning 15 Italian regions and 60 provinces and including 215 service areas, around 4,200 road bridges, and over 420 km of tunnels.

The Group today is in transformation, undergoing a radical restructuring that will lead it to become an integrated mobility operator of European scale.

The idea of developing an HSE game was part of the Active Safety programme promoted by Autostrade per l’Italia, which was looking for a new way of delivering workplace safety training to its employees.

The approach developed enabled players to explore HSE issues by bringing them face-to-face with situations of danger, where they had to choose what action to take to move forward in the game. That’s right! Players found themselves in a decontextualized workplace environment, faced with the challenges of saving an Active Safety Coach stranded in the mountains. Only those who showed true Active Safety “talent” could achieve the mission.

In developing the game, the Digit’Ed team worked closely with the Autostrade per l’Italia team in designing the challenges presented by the game to ensure that each covered the specific areas and values of knowledge, attention, responsibility, communication, and time management.

The high level of engagement created by the gaming approach promoted greater awareness of the mindset and behaviour essential for an effective HSE system, while encouraging proactive and generative attitudes and skills on HSE issues.

“Using the metaphor of a game to learn to recognize dangers and make the right choices for preventing risk is a winning way of engaging people on HSE issues,” remarked Raffaele Santoro, in charge of HS Culture & Education at Autostrade per l’Italia.

Fully digital, the game was run in three rounds, putting both office workers and people out in the field to the challenge once a month for three months. The outcomes led to a final ranking, with prizes awarded to the winners.