Safety Castle for workplace safety

Starting point

The Interkantonaler Verband für Arbeitnehmerschutz (IVA) wants its prevention brand SAFE AT WORK to reach young workers where they learn and work: inter-company courses, vocational schools and training companies, from bakeries and butchers to hospitality, garages, care and administration. Together with Ogilvy, we developed Safety Castle for this, a mobile, modular experience. It has been touring Switzerland since August 2026, starting with apprentices from the Adullam Spital- und Pflegezentrum in Basel. Thanks to funding from EKAS, it is free for host venues.

The brief

A subject young workers often tune out had to become fun. Our answer: dopamine, not a wagging finger. In six challenges, apprentices practise paying attention, behaving safely and making sound decisions. Each one is understood in seconds, with trained promoters on hand. Several challenges end with a «golden rule», the one sentence that sticks. The best players enter the Hall of Fame with their high score.

The six challenges

The Toxic Touch: hazardous substances. At the hazardous-substances cabinet, players identify real hazard symbols and reject the fakes. Wrong choices cost penalty points. That way, safe handling sticks before it matters at work. The golden rule: «Protect yourself before you start.»

The Slippery Slope: slips and trips. The most common workplace accident of all, here as a real slide with a landing mat. The challenge trains an eye for wet floors, cables and obstacles and makes one thing clear: the right shoes are your first piece of protective equipment.

The Manual Machine: machinery. A crank, gears and buzzers make it tangible what following instructions means: get trained, respect safety guards, ask when unsure, listen carefully. The golden rule: «Master the machine, not the risk.»

The Expert’s Eye: visual checks. Intact or defective? At a round buzzer table, apprentices check tools, some of which are damaged or wrongly adjusted. They use a buzzer to decide whether a tool is intact and hear the result through headphones.

The Distraction Derby: distraction and concentration. An oversized phone emoji («LOL», «Hurry up!») swings through the castle gate as a distraction. Anyone who stays focused, even under time pressure, gets through safely. The twist: players first have to memorise a sequence.

Know the Numbers: emergencies. A castle-style slot machine: after a pull of the lever, an emergency number appears with three answers below it. Apprentices pick the right one by buzzer, and a correct answer wins a giveaway. The numbers practised are ambulance 144, fire brigade 118, police 117 and Tox Info Suisse 145. The golden rule: «Stay calm. Then act.»

From the workshop

Six challenges, six one-offs, nothing off the shelf. We developed and built every station from scratch, from the round buzzer station and the walk-on slide to the crank machine and the slot machine. Each game has its own mechanics and so its own combination of construction and programming. Development and construction took around four months. Everything was wired, programmed and welded in our workshop.

For the shell, we converted two shipping containers, one 20-foot and one 10-foot, weatherproof and transportable. They became a castle in SAFE AT WORK’s signal yellow: brick-effect facade, battlements, an arched gate and the knight on the crest, with cobblestones and wall torches inside. Instead of castle romance, oversized emojis speak the apprentices’ language, from the «LOL» phone to the sleeping emoji with «Hurry up!».

The client wanted a modular setup: each challenge can be used on its own, and the whole castle works indoors and outdoors.

Delivery

• Concept and sequencing of the six challenges in close collaboration with Ogilvy
• Game design and programming of the interactive stations
• Visualisation and branding
• Design and construction of the modular castle
• Logistics, tour management, set-up, take-down and storage