Strivr helps United Rentals enhance operational safety & efficiency

United Rentals is the largest construction equipment rental company in the world, employing over 18,500 employees who help rent over $14 billion worth of equipment to construction sites, utilities companies, municipalities, and residential homeowners across the country. Like all equipment rental companies, outside sales representatives are key to their business.

They need to feel comfortable and confident when stepping onto loud, chaotic, and often dangerous job sites and assessing critical needs in the moment. Making sure these employees across 1,000 rental locations are properly trained is critical to safety outcomes as well as sales potential.

United Rentals had long struggled with how to consistently train their outside sales representatives so their on-the-job learning curve wouldn’t put them in harm’s way or jeopardize their decision-making in a high-pressure environment. Unfortunately, standard classroom training with pictures and videos fell short of replicating the actual job site experience.

Facing these challenges, United Rentals teamed up with Strivr to develop an immersive training program that would simulate the real-world experience of being on an active construction site.

Once in the headset, learners are immersed in a dynamic construction site which was captured using 360-degree video of a real location. As learners look around and explore their environment, they see everything one might see at a real construction site: unfinished buildings, large machinery and equipment, workers, and dozens of hazards.
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Trainees perform scene explorations, where they learn about problem areas on a site. Next, they are tested using scene hunts, which are timed assessments of how well they can identify the problem areas in a new environment. These experiences were created across 5 different construction phases and each experience was developed using instructional design best practices to ensure that trainees learn the right amount of information in each module for maximum retention.