Missing focus on Human Factors – organizational and cognitive ergonomics – in the safety management for the petroleum industry

This article explored the application of HF/E in Norwegian petroleum industry (as of 2017).

Some of the results were pretty interesting, and representative of elsewhere.

Findings:

· “results revealed an immature focus and organization of Human Factors”

· “Expertise on organizational ergonomics and cognitive ergonomics are missing from companies and safety authorities and are poorly prioritized during the development”

· “The easy observable part of Human Factors (i.e. physical ergonomics) is often in focus. Poor focus on Human Factors in the design process creates demanding conditions for human operators and impact safety and resilience”

· “Our impression is that research on HF has been marginalized. Missing governmental research investment, poor awareness/knowledge and poor prioritization from management are all reasons for the current unfavourable status”

· “It seems there are more understanding of HF in the aviation industry and automotive industry where there is a need for HF experts to explore the critical interplay between humans and technology” but Norway, has not “had the same industrial conditions making it necessary to focus on HF”

· Physical ergonomics [WE, working environment] has been seen as a major part of HF and HSE in the Norwegian oil and gas sector, which is positive”

· However, the focus on WE “has led to less attention to organizational and cognitive ergonomics”

· “These misconceptions may create misunderstanding of the scope of the HF discipline, i.e. that HF is existing as a subordinate of WE discipline”

· “Poor design of alarms and HMI in the drilling area lead to missing advance alarms, spurious alarms or false alarms, which gives poor support to the situational awareness of the drillers”

Ref: Johnsen, S. O., Kilskar, S. S., & Fossum, K. R. (2017). Missing focus on Human Factors–organizational and cognitive ergonomics–in the safety management for the petroleum industry. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part O: Journal of risk and reliability, 231(4), 400-410.