(43c) Helping Humans Get it Right

Humans are involved in every incident. Humans design, operate and maintain the equipment we operate. Yet human performance may not be a primary area of focus. The UK HSE requires task analysis on some tasks which has prompted a greater understanding of human performance basics than in the US where the topic is not directly addressed in regulation.

Often human factors studies use vocabulary that is not familiar to process safety professionals and require specialist consultant support. This paper will share a tool developed by a major oil and gas company based on approaches used in the UK. The tool provides a step-by-step approach for considering the human performance of a task [in order to design the task to reduce mistakes OR to promote safe, reliable completion of the task]. It uses simple terminology and may be used by process safety professionals and operations personnel.