Human factors in process safety: the top 10 issues

Abstract

There is an increasing emphasis on the importance of managing human factors to achieve improved safety and business performance in the chemical process industries and resource sector. Major process safety accidents, including those at Texas City, Varanus Island and Montara have again highlighted the importance of addressing this aspect of performance. Recently the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) announced an additional focus on human factors as part of their regulatory activities, noting that these factors are relevant to performance across safety, integrity, and environmental management. This extended abstract explains how the subject of human factors in process safety has been defined in the UK, categorised by the top 10 key topics. How this targeted approach helps manage this aspect of process safety performance is also discussed. Finally, this extended abstract shows how safety culture and behavioural safety are not the same as human factors. Case studies of the oil and gas industry show how attending to the top 10 delivers benefits by strengthening the effectiveness of management systems, and improving human reliability. This extended abstract directs the reader to a range of high-quality, open-source research, guidance, tools, and techniques to improve across the top 10 human-factors subjects in process safety.