Human Factors Engineering

  Many of these biases affect belief formation, business and economic decisions, and human behavior in general. They arise as a replicable result to a specific condition: when confronted with a specific situation, the deviation from what is normatively expected can be characterized by: Ambiguity effect – the tendency to avoid options for which missing…...

Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1900-1986) served more than 60 years of active military duty in the U.S. Navy – longer than anyone in our history. He is known as the Father of the Nuclear Navy. For 34 years, he led the organization that developed the pressurized water reactor technology that propels our nuclear Navy and…...

Events are caused. Typically, they are triggered by human action. In most cases, the human action causing the event was in error. However, the action could have been directed by a procedure; or it could have been a shortcut to get the job done—a violation. In any case, an act initiates the undesired consequences. On…...

Here we were in 2015, and still, we have far too many businesses still focusing on active failures and ignoring the latent failures impacting their significant incidents.  This approach is the LAZY approach to incident investigation. It also misses the mark on corrective action plans, which almost ensure the organization will not learn from the…...

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As I have said countless times, we ALL make errors.  This means in situations where those errors carry more severe consequences, such as industrial workplaces, then as safety engineers, it is our role to help the business DESIGN SAFE work tasks.  In HF engineering, we have eight (8) system design principles: Accurate mental models Managing…...

The growth of large, complex technology systems in recent decades, such as nuclear power plants, commercial aviation, the petrochemical industry, chemical process plants, and marine and rail transport, has spawned rare but often catastrophic events such as organizational or system accidents. The Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Bhopal India…...

Yes, I am just a sick safety professional who needs help! You may have a point, but I just had to share this “human factors” learning experience from my wife and daughter. First, let me say that there are probably not many women smarter than my wife and 12-year-old daughter. Both women put me to…...

The Herald of Free Enterprise capsized on March 6, 1987, killing ~200 people. It sank because its inner and outer bow doors had been left open on sailing due to a combination of factors and decisions. The subsequent investigation found that all of these could have been avoided or ameliorated. Management failures set up a…...