Human Factors awards presented for first Australian series

IChemE’s inaugural Australian Human Factors in Health and Safety professional development course has just wrapped up the final module of its four-part Australian programme in Perth, WA - a milestone that was marked by an award presentation to two delegates who best demonstrated the application of human factors learning from the course.

Led by course directors, Ronny Lardner and Emily Novatsis from The Keil Centre, the intensive programme was delivered over a 12 month period via four, two day training modules by accredited human factors professionals with experience of the process industries.

Lardner reported that the course attracted an average of 42 delegates at each module and saw 26 completing the full programme in Australia. 

“The attractiveness of this particular course is that it is designed to provide people with practical knowledge, tools and techniques so that human factors application can be achieved”.

“The course is already popular in Europe and the programme has been well received in Australia, with positive feedback indicating enthusiasm from delegates who were particularly engaged by the practical way the course was delivered.”

“All reported that they enjoyed the style of delivery and the mix of practical applications, along with the invaluable opportunities for networking with peers from across Australia’s major hazards industries.”

Due to the high standard of submissions received for the Human Factors Award, two were chosen as joint winners and were presented to Raj Sreenevasan from Proteus Group and Mark Leigh from ConocoPhillips Australia for their efforts in applying human factors learning in the workplace.

Sreenevasan’s was recognised for his work in conducting an exploratory study on process safety awareness in the workplace. This led to the development of the initial version of the Proteus Safety in Design (SiD) procedure that included training sessions for company engineers and designers. Sreensevasan has also shared his human factors knowledge via technical papers at several conferences and seminars over the past six months.

 “The human factors training program was quite interesting due to its interactive nature that was different from attending conference sessions. Spacing out the modules provided the opportunity to practice learned knowledge which is normally absent in the conference experience.”

Leigh was recognised for improving his workplace reporting procedures for process safety incidents, the development of a monthly newsletter, conference presentations and providing overviews for contractor HSE forums, project team meetings and “lunch ‘n’ learn” sessions.  Leigh has also a built company wiki site for easy access to human factors information with plans in place for 2014 to improving the workplace incident investigation system that will identify when is cause is human factors related.

“It’s been exciting to see the change in human factors understanding across senior levels of management and indeed the broader ConocoPhillips organisation over the last 12 months. You can sense the increased realisation of the importance of the topic, coupled with a desire to understand more and figure out ways we can improve.”

IChemE and The Keil Centre joined forces to present this program in Europe and Australia following an urgent need to address the human failures that often threaten the complex and potentially hazardous systems within the chemical and process industries.

Following the success of the Perth programme, Human Factors in Health & Safety is now being run from Brisbane QLD, with its second module taking place on 26-28 May. Perth will be commencing its second series, with Module1 taking place on 26-28 February.  For more information and to register for the Australian programme contact April Hinde, or visit the course website. For more information about the European programme, visit the Europe website.