New construction staff go through a lot of training before their first day. They complete basic safety and health training, and their site induction covers PPE, fall and falling-object hazards, and emergency evacuation. Accidents rarely happen because people don't know the rules. New hires get stuck at the moment the rules from the classroom collide with what people say on site: "It's only five minutes." "Let's pour now and sort the paperwork out later."
The apartment construction map in First Run turns those moments into quests. The setting is Riverside Block 1, a new apartment complex built by the fictional Firststone Construction. You start every day at the morning TBM (toolbox meeting) and work your way from intern to Site Manager. This article walks through how those quests were designed as construction onboarding scenarios.
How the construction map is set up
There are five roles.
- Construction Engineer: rain forecast on pour day, pressure to pour before rebar sign-off, tomorrow's work order.
- Contracts & Cost Engineer: recovering the schedule after the rains, drawing clashes and design changes, progress claims and evidence.
- MEP Engineer: sleeve check before the pour, pressure test before the ceiling closes, leakage on a temporary distribution board.
- Quality Control Engineer: ready-mix acceptance testing, rebar that doesn't match its certificate, a low 7-day strength result.
- Safety Manager: hot-work permits, "It's only five minutes", working through a heat wave.
On top of that come two shared tutorials, three stakeholder quests such as a supervision finding, noise and dust complaints and finish upgrades before handover, and two quests from the Site Manager's seat on an acceleration request and a crane near-miss.
The first morning: TBM and PPE
The first tutorial is 7 a.m. on your first day in the assembly yard. The TBM is about to start. Your safety boots haven't been issued, so you came in sneakers, and your hard hat chin strap is undone.
- Stand at the back where nobody will notice and wait for the TBM to end: Poor
- You're office staff, so skip the TBM and head to the site office: Poor
- You're only observing today, so keep your sneakers on and stick to the edge of the walkways: Risky
- Fasten the chin strap, tell the trainer you have no safety boots and get a pair before entering the work area, then join the TBM: Excellent
The feedback on the Risky option points out that observers face the same nails and falling objects as everyone else, and PPE rules apply the moment you enter the work area. The easiest mistake for a new hire is thinking "I'm not one of the workers", and the first quest goes after that thought.
When you spot an open floor opening
In the second tutorial, on your way to the site office you see that the cover on a third-floor floor opening has been moved, with no barrier around it, and a worker carrying material is walking toward it without a clear view ahead. Taking a photo and posting it in the team chat at lunch is Risky. The worker is still walking toward the hole in the meantime.
The option worth a closer look is putting the cover back yourself and carrying on without reporting it. That one is Good. The hazard is smaller, but nobody knows why the cover was moved or whether it is properly secured. Excellent is calling out to stop the worker, keeping people away from the opening, reporting it at once to the safety manager or your supervisor, and staying until it's covered or barricaded. Even when you've fixed it, you report it so the cause gets fixed.
Irreversible work: the concrete pour
The hardest thing to undo on a construction site is a concrete pour, and quests for the construction, MEP and quality roles cluster around it.
Rain forecast on pour day
Tomorrow morning you pour the 12th-floor slab. Ready-mix and the pump are booked, and the forecast just changed to a 60% chance of rain from the afternoon. Telling no one and deciding by looking at the sky in the morning is Poor, because the plant and the pump company plan dispatch the day before. Telling the foreman in advance that a little water can be added on site if the rain slows things down is also Poor. Unapproved water changes the water-cement ratio and lowers strength and durability.
Pouring as planned with tarps and sheeting ready at every bay is Risky. Protection matters, but it is not a substitute for a decision rule. Excellent is using the hourly forecast to agree go/no-go criteria and a decision time today with supervision, the plant and the pump company.
Pour pressure before rebar sign-off
It's pour-day morning. The pump is set up and the first ready-mix truck has left the plant. But supervision's rebar inspection found missing spacers and short laps in one bay, so there is no sign-off, and the formwork foreman says to pour now and sort the paperwork out later.
- Pour as the foreman says and settle the paperwork with supervision in the afternoon: Poor
- Pour the bays that passed and pick a construction-joint location on the spot: Risky
- Cancel the whole day, send the trucks back and write up the reason tomorrow: Risky
- Get the flagged bay fixed now and ask for re-inspection. Pause ready-mix dispatch, and agree with the team lead and supervision whether to delay the whole pour or split it at an approved joint: Excellent
"What you cover, you can't inspect" rules out the first option. The more important lesson is in the third. Stopping is safe, but delaying the report leaves supervision, the site office and subcontractors working from different plans, and you lose bays that could have been poured after a quick fix. If you stop, say so right away.
Sleeve checks and ready-mix acceptance
In the MEP quest, nobody has yet checked whether the bathroom drain sleeves and sprinkler sleeves in tomorrow's slab match the coordinated drawings. Going up with the drawing now, checking each sleeve and getting missing ones in before the pre-pour inspection is Excellent. Asking the frame team to push the whole pour back a day until you've checked is Good. Protecting quality is the right instinct, but checking first may solve it without any delay. Check before you stop.
In the quality quest, the first truck for a wall pour arrives with slump over the allowed range, and the driver says the plant added a little extra water because of the heat. Accepting the truck but casting twice the usual number of cylinders and deciding once strength results are in is Risky, because strength results arrive after the concrete is already in the structure. Excellent is rejecting that truck per the criteria, recording it, telling the plant and the construction engineer, and testing the trucks that follow.
The safety manager's call: action before records
On patrol you see a worker at the edge of the 14th-floor slab without their harness hooked on. The lifeline on that side isn't installed yet, and the foreman says, "It's only five minutes."
- Tell the worker to be careful and carry on with the patrol: Poor
- Take a photo and share it as an example at the weekly safety meeting: Poor
- Issue a penalty on the spot, tell the foreman to sort it out and move on: Risky
- Stop work at that edge now and move the worker back from it. Resume only once a lifeline or guardrail is in, and work out with the foreman why it was missing: Excellent
A photo and a penalty both feel like doing something. Meanwhile, the worker is still standing where they could fall. Confirming the fix is in place comes before pointing out the violation.
The heat wave quest is similar. When the rebar crew on the top floor wants to work straight through without breaks to finish early, sending up plenty of cold drinks and leaving the schedule as it is gets Risky. Water matters, but rest, shade and adjusted hours have to go with it. Excellent provides cool water and a shaded rest area, sets breaks by the heat level and makes sure they're taken, moves work out of the hottest hours and keeps an eye on new and older workers.
The contracts engineer's call: money and evidence
Contracts and cost is often missing from construction onboarding. At month-end, the rebar subcontractor's progress claim is well above what the daily reports and inspection records support, and their boss says that without full payment, this month's wages will be tight.
- Hold the entire payment until the dispute is settled: Poor
- Pay the full claim this month and reconcile the gap next month: Risky
- Pay only the quantity backed by records and tell them the rest is not accepted: Good
- Check the claim with them against daily reports, inspection records and photos, pay the verified part on time and schedule a re-measure for the rest: Excellent
Holding everything blocks even the undisputed amount, which can delay workers' wages, and subcontract payment deadlines still apply. The difference between Good and Excellent is whether you also offered a way to resolve the disagreement.
As Site Manager: even a stop has a scope
The last two quests are decisions made by the person responsible for the whole site.
The owner offers an acceleration bonus for handing over a month early. Hitting the date by trimming curing times and inspections is Poor. Accepting straight away with weekend shifts and extra crews is Risky, and so is refusing without further discussion because safety comes first. A refusal without review takes options away from both the owner and head office. Excellent works out what acceleration really takes and offers conditional options, such as early handover of some blocks, with cost and risk, while curing, inspections and safety staffing stay fixed.
In the crane near-miss quest, part of a formwork load fell during a tower crane lift. Nobody was hurt, but the subcontractor blames the signaller and workers are uneasy. Replacing the signaller and resuming today is Poor, and so is skipping the report because nobody was hurt. Shutting down all work on site for a week, whatever the investigation finds, is Risky. A stop is needed, but its scope and length should match the cause. Excellent stops the related lifts, closes off the area and reports through company procedure, finds and fixes the root cause in rigging, signalling and the exclusion zone together with the subcontractor and workers, shares the lessons at an all-hands TBM, and then resumes.
Cautions when building construction onboarding scenarios
- Scenario quests do not replace mandatory safety training. They are practice in recalling what you learned while the schedule is pushing.
- Write wrong answers in words people really say on site. A quest built around "It's only five minutes" becomes the scene a new hire remembers when they hear it for real.
- Don't let "stop everything" become the default right answer. Judgment practice needs the scope of the stop, who to tell and the conditions for restarting.
- Put office roles into site quests too. Contracts staff stand at the TBM, and their payment decisions reach workers' wages.
- Keep real site names, subcontractor names and the identities of people involved in incidents out.
Checklist for construction site onboarding
- Does the first quest set the standard for PPE and the TBM?
- Does a quest explain why you report a hazard even after fixing it yourself?
- Do players practice decision rules and decision times before irreversible work like a pour?
- Is pouring without inspection sign-off wrong in every situation?
- When a safety violation is spotted, does action come before records?
- Are money decisions such as progress claims covered too?
- Does the feedback explain why a full shutdown or an unreviewed refusal is not the right answer?
For the design rules shared across industries, read Industry-specific onboarding scenarios. The semiconductor map is covered in Semiconductor new hire training scenarios.
Try workplace scenarios as onboarding quests
Pick the apartment construction site in a new game and start with your first TBM. Play the Onboarding