Safety critical
The majority of losses are caused by failures in human performance and organisational management. Therefore effective risk management should consider these risk factors in the preparation of safety cases and process safety management systems.
Human Engineering’s safety critical task review method examines the main site hazards and human interactions with complex and hazardous processes. It identifies any opportunities for failure and the performance influencing factors that make these failures more likely. The effectiveness of any existing control measures is taken into account before generating recommendations for improved control measures.
The Safety Critical Task review process is applied using a HAZOP style methodology and the outputs can be integrated with both Company and site specific risk management systems.
In the UK the Safety Critical Task review process is consistent with the HSE’s assessment guidelines for COMAH safety reports. In the US the methodology offers a good practice solution to effective human factors risk management for OSHA’s Process Safety Management requirements.