"Million for an Idea" Corporate Contest for Ideas and Initiatives. VR Simulator Project by the HSE Directorate of JSC Rosgeo

Rosgeologia Holding conducts the "Million for an Idea" contest to motivate employees to develop improvements aimed at optimizing business processes, achieving economic benefits, reducing labor costs, and improving the quality and safety of services.

What is the goal of this project?

The goal of this project is to provide an opportunity to implement initiatives from employees of JSC Rosgeo, its subsidiaries, branches, and separate divisions of the Holding to simplify and increase the efficiency of management processes at all levels (reducing approval times, automating reporting forms, improving the quality of interaction and management regulations, enhancing the quality and safety of services, etc.). Every employee of the Holding can propose any idea, which is then reviewed by the Expert Council.

What are the requirements for ideas to participate in the project?

All proposals must contain all necessary information regarding the essence of the proposed changes, providing sufficient data for practical implementation: process diagrams, change calculations, drawings, technical schemes, sketches, descriptions, etc.

Improvement proposals should not be included in the list of activities already part of the work plan or the Holding's Long-Term Development Program.

How many proposals are submitted for the contest?

Between 100 and 130 initiatives are submitted by Rosgeologia Holding employees for the contest. The Expert Council selects and launches 10-15 projects for implementation. About 5-10 initiatives are presented to the Holding's Management Board for award selection.

How are the results summarized and awards presented?

The Management Board of Rosgeologia Holding summarizes the contest results:

• reviews implemented improvement proposals;
• determines the contest winners;
• determines the incentive fund and the amount of remuneration for the winners;

The author(s) and participant(s) of the initiatives recognized as the best receive a cash reward from the contest budget, as determined by the Holding's Management Board, following the official award ceremony.

What proposals were submitted by the HSE Directorate?

Based on the results of our participation in the corporate contest, the HSE Directorate of JSC Rosgeo won a prize for the implementation of a VR simulator project in the field of HSE.

The project is a physically implemented simulator structure based on VR headsets. The project features a functional menu, access to demo HSE briefings, and the physics of a future simulator for fire evacuation procedures. The project was implemented without involving third-party programmers, solely through internal efforts.

Why develop such a complex system independently when it is easier to order it from specialized organizations?

Currently, we are operating under maximum budget savings, yet we want to stay on trend with digital developments and capabilities. Developing the VR environment simulator structure independently saved the company approximately 500,000 rubles.

Additionally, the competencies gained during the implementation of this project allow us to independently make any changes and supplement the existing system with new training scenarios in any similar systems.

You can view a prototype of the simulator in action in the video (recorded from the VR headset lenses) - https://disk.yandex.ru/i/snr2RSQ4v9Rpjg

For the implementation of the project, the following were used:

VR Platform: Oculus Quest

Development Environment: Unity

Development Language and Logic: C#

Full-cycle development: Evgeny Kuzmichev, Deputy Director of the HSE Department at JSC Rosgeo