Human Factors Engineering

People do not err intentionally. Error is a human action that unintentionally departs from expected behavior. Error is behavior without malice or forethought; it is not a result. Human error is provoked by a mismatch between human limitations and environmental conditions at the job site, including inappropriate management and leadership practices and organizational weaknesses that…...

The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) was developed by Dr. Scott Shappell and Dr. Doug Wiegmann. It is a human error methodology originally used by the US Air Force to investigate and analyze human factors in aviation. Some of you may recognize HFACS in another form, based on James Reason’s Swiss Cheese model. The…...

This is intended to be a high-level explanation of an assessment of the human contribution to risk, commonly known as the Human Reliability Assessment (HRA).There are two distinct types of HRA: qualitative assessments that aim to identify potential human failures and optimize the factors that may influence human performance, and quantitative assessments, which, in addition,…...

Key Principles in integrating Human Factors in Hazard Identification, Hazard Analysis, and Risk Assessments include:… Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a member? Log in here...

The strategic approach to improving human performance within safety embraces two (2) primary challenges: Anticipate, Prevent, Catch, and Recover from ACTIVE errors Identify and Eliminate LATENT organizational weaknesses that provoke human error and degrade controls against error and the consequences of error Preventable errors will not be eliminated if opportunities to err are not methodically…...

Several studies have evaluated the effectiveness of behavioral modification programs in improving workplace safety. These studies have focused on establishing the following: their ability to decrease accidents/injuries, their ability to increase safe behavior and which components in a behavioral observation safety processes are most important in changing unsafe behavior and reducing accidents and injuries… Membership...

One of my favorite examples of Human Factors Engineering is the Center High-Mounted stop Lamps.  We have all seen them on every personal vehicle manufactured today.  They are now a safety requirement.  But it was not always that way.  So, what is a CHMSL?  CHMSL are red stop lamps mounted on the center line of…...

Human Performance Improvement (HPI) is the systematic process of determining desired performance, continually monitoring performance, discovering and analyzing performance gaps, designing and developing effective interventions, implementing these interventions, and continually evaluating the results of improvement interventions within performance monitoring to ensure that the improvement process takes place.  The goal of excellence in human performance is…...

Humans are integral to the safe operation of a nuclear power plant. In the late 1970s, NRC began to focus on protecting and ensuring adequate training of plant staff to perform their assigned tasks. The NRC studied factors affecting performance, such as the effects of shift work on health and whether control room simulators would…...