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Marine Design, 3-4 September 2014, Coventry, UK


rarely set out to kill themselves or others intentionally. Good Human Factors is about understanding the risk factors and cognitive response to a situation. People make logical decisions based on the information they have available to them at the time, but their actions can appear strange after the event. It is therefore important to remember that everyone wants to get back home safely so they do not intentionally put themselves or others at risk.


Human Factors expands beyond the simple position of buttons and also focussing on the underlying system logic. HSI is about taking all the information that exists about how to design good systems and what we know about people, and putting that information together to optimise total system performance, reduce error and reduce total life cost whilst at the same time improving safety by understanding and mitigating human error potential in the system.


3. THE MARINE DESIGN TEAM AND HSI


Ship design teams will by necessity be structured differently depending on the organisation and the nature of the production (e.g. scale of the programme, vessel type). However, a number of responsibilities can be commonly found within the team, as illustrated within Figure 1.


The most logical representation of Human Factors in this structure is for it to run transversally across the domains since identified issues can arise from almost any element of the design


(ranging from the Piping and


Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) to the structure, and paint scheme).


Any design process within a programme is unlikely to happen in isolation and thus the composition of the team (and associated team dynamics) are critical elements that will impact the delivery of the solution. For the Human Factors members within the team, it is important that they not only are responsible for the technical delivery of that aspect but they also have to manage common misconceptions


that other team members may have


regarding Human Factors. This is an implicit part of the role when joining an engineering team as it is likely that the Engineers and other stakeholders will have varying levels of Human Factors knowledge.


It is of course possible for everyone to work in isolation, but that has predictable consequences.


In order for


Human Factors to achieve its objectives it is necessary to work across all of the team disciplines to one extent or another as there are varying levels of HSI applicability in all of them. The effectiveness of the mechanisms, structures and individual willingness to allow that are key drivers to achieving a successful HSI programme of work.


4. HUMAN-SYSTEM INTEGRATION FOR MARITIME DESIGN


A key part of working effectively multidisciplinary team is using the within a right words to


describe the activity to the rest of the team: the term Human-System Integration describes the activity very well and is often more meaningful to the rest of the engineering team. Right away it is clear to systems engineers that there is an overlap between engineering and Human Factors.


The entire ship should be viewed as human-centric, as it is being built for people (with no people the design would likely to be radically different). That means paying attention to the unglamorous areas too, such as considering the habitability and ease of maintenance requirements for the sewage system, how seafarers will deal with marine life blockages in the strainers, or the accessibility of valves in the machinery spaces. Ships have only a finite amount of available space


equipment and functions, and the layout and proximity of these functions can


have a significant bearing


for on


efficiency and also the perception of the crew of the ship and their working environment and crew retention.


Systems are not just metal, plastic and lines of code; the human is as much a part of the system as anything else [9]. Adopting a HSI process affords a more structured approach which often allows issues to be addressed early in a programme when it is more cost effective to make changes, rather than attempting to address human issues as they suddenly arise later in the process.


Managing the ‘human element’ with a structured HSI approach has a lot in common with systems engineering. As with other engineering disciplines it is necessary to be precise and methodical to ensure that the end result is well considered. There is as little point referring to the ‘engineering element’ as there is the ‘human element’ in a complex system. Therefore in order to systematically manage the ‘human element’ it is necessary to break it down into defined areas. The main principles behind the HSI process have been developed in parallel around the world, and this has led to some terminology,


differences in but the underpinning principles remain


constant even where the descriptors slightly vary. For example in most international HSI discussions there are nine domains, whereas in the UK Human Factors Integration (HFI) process discusses only seven (as seen in Figure 2).


5. APPLYING HSI TO THE MARITIME DOMAIN


At the start of a project a HSI Plan (HSIP) needs to be generated that addresses the specific human elements associated with the user requirements of that system. An Early Human Factors


Analysis (EHFA) is then performed in order to assess and describe the main


© 2014: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects


C-173


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