NSC-10-05 Integrating Human Factors into High Frequency/Low Severity Incident Investigations

Description:

Eighty percent of all industrial accidents can be attributed, at least in part, to human error. However, attributing accidents to "human error" is overly simplistic - it's too large of a category to provide meaningful information that can be used to direct performance improvements. HFACS, the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System, helps to solve this problem by providing a framework to systematically identify human causal factors that result in accidents and incidents which then enables the identification of patterns, trends, and gap in existing A/I prevention processes. While a few companies are beginning to integrate HFACS into the investigation of their most serious process safety accidents and incidents (Levels A & B), fewer are applying this approach to their less severe but more frequent cases (Levels C & D). We believe that not applying HFACS to these types of incidents is a missed opportunity for learning and improving process safety performance. This presentation will provide a overview of HFACS and present an example of how BP is integrating Human Factors into Levels C & D Incident Investigations at its Cherry Point Refinery.