overview

Key Learning Objectives

• Understand the relationship between human factors and human reliability.
• Understand human variability and non-compliance in the context of event investigations within large and complex socio-technical systems.
• Recognise the human factors contribution to incidents in complex circumstances through the application of a structured taxonomy of human Actions/Inactions and Performance Shaping Factors (PSF’s).
• Understand that human actions/inactions are not a hazard but are the result of hazardous contextual conditions in the environment and workplace that go unchecked.
• Understand the relationship between human error, loss of control and the failure of prevention and recovery risk controls.
• Linking the investigation findings to Existing Critical Risk Controls (ECRCs), to continually improve critical control management.

About the Course

“To err is human; to blame it on the other guy is even more human”. – B. Goddard

Regardless of industry type or sector, accident statistics appear to be dominated by the contribution of human error. Human error was a factor in every major publicised accident in recent memory, including the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 1986 NASA Space Shuttle Challenger accident, 1988 Piper Alpha offshore platform explosion and 1998 Esso Longford gas plant explosion.

While human error is a normal part of our human makeup, it is disappointing that some discussions in the aftermath of a tragedy engage in hindsight bias and fall into the trap of the fundamental attribution error – that is to quickly judge human failings without fully understanding the situation individuals found themselves in at the time. Most incident investigation methods do not:

• Provide enough detail on how to assess the contextual factors that may lead to human error.
• Incorporate more contemporary concepts such as the influence of psychosocial hazards which can have an impact on the psychological health or mental/emotional wellbeing of a person.
• Use positive and neutral language to describe an individual’s actions/inactions. · Give enough credence to identifying how individuals performed well and what risk controls were effective.
• Incorporate critical control management (CCM) principles into the analysis as a means of developing error tolerant systems.

This program will teach you the skills to conduct more in-depth human factors analysis of significant incidents building on the foundations of established systemic investigation methods. You will be provided with a practical, step by step approach, including easily applied take away tools, forms, and templates, that can be replicated back in your workplace.

Who Will Benefit

This training program is designed for those individuals seeking a comprehensive understanding of how to conduct consistent human factors analysis in event investigations. Expected participants include:

• Executives and Senior Managers
• Team leaders and supervisors
• Human Resource Managers
• Environmental managers
• WHS and injury management personnel
• Safety Investigators/Auditors
• Safety Regulators
• Quality, risk, compliance and assurance managers
• Safety Data Analysis Specialists
• Learning & Development/Training Managers