What’s in a name

Introduction

I have to admit, I’m a pragmatist when it comes to language.  Words are for communication.  If everyone understands what you are talking about, does it matter what word you use?  It seems to me that Human Factors struggles with names, sometimes to the detriment of the discipline.

Analysis of Human Factors

Right now I am working with a team of crack Human Factors Specialists to develop some guidance on a process much in use in the Major Hazard Industries.  A rough outline of the process would be:

  • Identify tasks undertaken by humans which increase the risk of a major accident;
  • Break the task down into individual task steps;
  • Determine the ways in which critical task steps could fail (too much, too little, too soon, too late etc);
  • Determine the failure type (slip, lapse, mistake, violation);
  • Determine what would make the failure more likely (Performance Influencing Factors);
  • Work out what control measures and recovery measures already exist; and
  • Decide what more can be done to prevent human failure (in line with the hierarchy of control).

The Health and Safety Executive call this Human Reliability Assessment (HSE, 2016).  However, there are other names for this process in use. 

A lot of petrochemical companies call this process Safety Critical Task Analysis because the relevant good practise in this area is published by the Energy Institute under that name (EI, 2022).  It does however lead to confusion around the group of techniques Human Factors specialists call task analysis. Task analysis is an important part of the process.  Typically, hierarchical or tabular task analysis (or both) are used to break the task down into individual task steps.

Many call this Human Error Analysis.  Early methodologies developed to carry out qualitative assessments talked about Human Error rather than Human Reliability e.g. Predictive Human Error Analysis (HSE, 2000).  

Also, people ascribe different meanings to the term Human Reliability Assessment.  Many Human Factors practitioners would understand Human Reliability Assessment to include much of the  process described above, but also quantification of the probability of human error. 

HSE chose to call this process Human Reliability Assessment for three reasons: 

  1. Human error includes the first three failure types (slip, lapse, mistake) but does not include violations (HSE, 1999, p.12). 
  2. There has been a general trend away from talking about human performance only in the negative (error, failure etc).  Human Factors specialists would prefer to acknowledge the contribution humans make to keeping things running within the safe operating envelope. 
  3. A good quantitative assessment is wholly dependent on a sufficiently detailed qualitative analysis. 

Therefore, Human Reliability Analysis seemed like a good name to encompass both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

So what’s in a name?  Does it matter what we call it?  What’s your preference? 

References

HSE (1999) Reducing Error and Influencing Behaviour (HSG48). London: HMSO.

HSE (2000) Offshore Technology Report – OTO 1999 092; Human Factors Assessment of Safety Critical Tasks, downloadable from HSE: OTO 1999/092 Human factors assessment

Energy Institute (2022) Guidance on Human Factors Safety Critical Task Analysis, downloadable from Guidance on human factors safety critical task analysis | EI – Publishing (energyinst.org)

One reply on “What’s in a name”

I really appreciate your comment. Somethings I struggle with the names too. However, it has always helped me to understood the Safety Critical Task Analysis as the qualitative part of the Human Heliability Analysis – mainly due to the process described in the book A Guide To Practical Human Reliability Assessment (Kirwan). I always understood that SCTA not always have a defined taxonomy – the taxonomy is usually given by the HRA method.

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