The Human Engineering of Human Factors Procedures: Effective Nuclear Power Plant Control Room Evaluations

Abstract

Practical methods and procedures which decrease the amount of time required to conduct an evaluation can be invaluable to human factors specialists as most are usually limited by economic and time constraints. Presented are the hypotheses that 1) the amount of effort required to collect survey data using checklist procedures is related to the quantities of controls and displays and is relatively independent of the system's operational complexities, and 2) the amount of effort required to conduct task analyses is related to the number of operators involved and the number of different ways in which operators interface with equipment, and is relatively independent of control and display quantities once these quantities reach a certain level. Procedures for collecting large quantities of data using checklists are described and the results of applying these procedures in a nuclear power plant control room where control board components exceeded 4000 instruments are discussed. The procedures used involved; 1) the development of a photographic mock-up of the control board, 2) serial numbering all components, 3) preparing component record sheets and discrepancy report forms prior to the evaluation, 4) modifying traditional checklists to a new format, and 5) revising the data collection methods for checklists.