Human factors in design and operations

Summary

Learn to reduce human error, improve safety and increase efficiency by understanding how human abilities, limitations and needs can be applied to the design and assessment of tasks, equipment, systems and processes.

During this course, you will learn about how and why errors occur and the tools and techniques that can be used to identify, analyse and reduce them; these are demonstrated using real-world examples from high hazard industries. 

This course will also examine the factors that influence a person’s experience of the workplace environment, and cover HRA (Human Reliability Analysis and SCTA (Safety-Critical Task Analysis), along with Human Factors Integration, cultural issues and organisational aspects; these topics include teamwork, communication and the management of change.  

The approach to this course is defined by the fact that we learn by ‘doing’; there are numerous activities which complement and embed the learning. 

Who should attend?

Managers, supervisors and HSE professionals.  

How will I benefit?

After the course you will be able to:

• Analyse the role of HF in systems engineering in order to achieve safe and effective designs, systems and processes 
• Evaluate the human characteristics which influence a user's experience of the workplace environment to ensure it is comfortable, healthy, safe and effective (accounting for physical and psychological capabilities and limitations) 
• Evaluate human error types (including violation) and their potential causes 
• Appraise human reliability and performance using appropriate methods in order to develop measures to reduce the likelihood of human error 

Key topics

• Introduction to Human Factors 
• Human Factors Integration (HFI) 
• Human Factors support to the design lifecycle for high hazard industries 
• Defining human error  
• Human error and violations 
• Human Reliability Analysis (HRA)