Tools, techniques and services
As human factors specialists, we routinely use a wide range of established and validatedergonomics and cognitive behaviour analyses tools. These tools provide structure to our approach and allow us to present a clear audit trail to our recommendations.
The services that Human Engineering provides comprise the following main aspects:
These may or may not all be relevant to a single case. Sometimes the focus of the work is the design of physical equipment (e.g. control room design); at other times it is human behaviour and performance (e.g. workload and manning). Alternativelythe focus may be on the organisation of people, and it is necessary to define job roles and to specify competency requirements and training plans.
The principal good practice methodology for the application of human factors to the systems engineering process is human factors integration (HFI). HFI offers a scheme to guide the deployment of human factors methods and techniques throughout the full lifecycle of an asset’s development and operation. Throughout this process the focus of HFI is directed to answering the following major questions:
Is the role of people in the system feasible?
Are the human-machine interfaces usable?
Will the required level of human performance be reliable?