Abstract
Human Factors Engineering (HFE) focuses on the application of human factors knowledge to the design and construction of socio-technical systems. The objective is to ensure systems are designed so as to optimise the human contribution to production and minimise potential f r design-induced risks to health, personal or process safety or environmental performance (OGP, 2011).
The ISO standard ISO 9241-210 (2010), Ergonomics of human-system interaction, requires that all new facilities projects apply the principles of Human Factors Engineering (HFE) during early design stages. In practice this means ensuring, as a minimum, that every new facilities project is screened in collaboration with the end users to identify whether there are any “hotspots” (risks, issues or opportunities) associated with the scope of the design project that justify further HFE activities. Further standards detail these activities, including physical and cognitive ergonomic assessments of the operator tasks, the equipment they will use to complete those tasks, and the environment in which they will be undertaken. However, the standards need to be generic enough so as to avoid being tailored to any specific design process; this in turns generates a need for more specific guidance on different processes and activities supporting a more holistic approach to guide Designers, Operators, Risk Assessors and Project Planners at design stage. This guidance should help stakeholders identify and recognise the value of Human Factors Engineering considerations to optimise and guide some of the solutions devised in the early stages. Such an approach should help avoid more costly intervention later on in the lifecycle of the product or plant being designed and the possibility of undesired events related to miss-conceived Human Machine Interactions. There is often a need to demonstrate that this small initial investment in engineering to consider Human Factors aspects can result in a major reduction in the operational life-cycle costs and improvement in the conditions at work. However, this is often only demonstrated retrospectively after minor or major accidents. Strong operational performance can only start with good design and an understanding of what constitutes good design requires a detailed knowledge of how humans interact within the work system. The problem is whether the currently available standards and guidelines of the process industry provide sufficient guidance for a framework to be practically used by process engineers, discipline engineers, human factors engineers, ergonomists, project management and operational/maintenance line management during decisions to be made in preparation and execution of projects?
This paper will start by observing and analysing the problem and presenting examples. The study will be continued by discussing what is currently available and performing a small gap analysis against concrete needs of case studies taken from the industry. Addressing those gaps will be within the scope of future research.
