Human Factors (interchangeable with ergonomics) is a scientific discipline which aims to enhance the relationship between people and systems to optimise safety and performance in the workplace.
Failure to properly consider Human Factors can result in systems that make it difficult for people to perform at their best impacting negatively on productivity, safety and cost, as well as worker health and well-being.
People are relied upon to make up for flaws in system design and may be blamed when things go wrong. Later re-engineering systems to rectify such flaws is expensive and can so easily be avoided if Human Factors is integrated early into the design process.
The Human Factors discipline considers the factors that affect human performance in three inter-related areas:
- job and workplace factors
- individual factors
- organisational factors
Specifically, what people are being asked to do and with what (the task, its characteristics and the associated equipment), who is doing it (the individual and their competence) and where they are working (the organisation and its attributes), all of which are influenced by the wider societal concern.
- we want to see early integration of Human Factors into the design process for new rail systems and technologies and it embedded throughout the whole lifecycle
- we would like operations and maintenance staff to be supported in their everyday tasks through competence management systems, fatigue risk management systems and well-designed tasks and procedures
- we want Human Factors techniques included in risk assessment and risk management to identify potential sources of error as well as risk control
- we would like dutyholders to have incident investigation processes that identify the underlying causes that influence human performance and not to focus solely on an individual’s actions
Greater understanding and recognition of the value of Human Factors particularly among key stakeholders would help prioritise the embedding of competent Human Factors practitioners in the rail industry to deliver the safety and performance benefits of a Human Factors approach.