What Human Factors Means
The UK HSE definition of human factors and its three parts: the job, the individual and the organisation.
12 min
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A well is drilled, tested and completed by people. They read gauges, interpret trends, follow procedures, hand over to the next shift and decide when to stop. Steel, cement and the blowout preventer (BOP) are designed with great care. The people who operate them deserve the same care in design. That is the subject of human factors.
The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) gives a definition in its guidance HSG48, Reducing error and influencing behaviour. It says that human factors refer to environmental, organisational and job factors, and human and individual characteristics, which influence behaviour at work in a way which can affect health and safety.
Two points in that definition are important. First, it is about behaviour at work, not about personality or blame. Second, it says behaviour is shaped by many things around the person, not only by the person.
The three parts of human factors in HSG48
What the task asks people to do: the workload, the procedures, the displays and controls, the working environment (noise, heat, motion, lighting) and the time available. On a rig this includes the driller’s cyber chair screens, the layout of the choke panel and the steps in a pressure test procedure.
Why all three matter together
The three parts interact. A well-written procedure (the job) still fails if the crew is too tired to follow it (the individual) or if the rig schedule leaves no time to do it properly (the organisation). A good human factors review asks about all three before it concludes that "the person made a mistake".
Human factors is also called ergonomics in many countries. Both terms describe fitting the work to people, rather than expecting people to adapt to badly designed work.
A drilling crew misses a step in a procedure because the rig schedule left only half the normal time for the job. Which part of the HSG48 framing does the schedule pressure belong to?