Safety performance human error prevention

The Concept of defence-in-depth is applied in designing safety systems to achieve functional diversity, i.e. by providing diversely functioning systems that can perform same safety function (e.g. two shutdown systems), multi barriers to prevent release of radioactivity, multi-defence system, using physical separation of systems and components which serve as back-up (in safety functions) to each other, and procuring components for different systems from different suppliers, to the extent possible. Such an approach leads to a design of safety systems which will be tolerant to a wide range of human errors and equipment failures. 

Chapanis, Alphonse. The Error-Provocative Situation . In The Measurement of Safety Performance, edited by William E. Tarrants. New York Garland Publishing, 1980. Guidelines for Preventing Human Error in Process Safety. New York Center for Chemical Process Safety of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1994. 

There have been a number of recent and well publicised accidents in which human error has played a prominent part. At Three Mile Island a combination of poor display design, bad maintenance and operator error led to the reactor core becoming uncovered and the release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. At the Ekofisk oil field incident a blowout preventer was installed upside down which resulted in an accident, following which widespread environmental pollution ensued. In both these cases the overall losses have been estimated in tens and hundreds of millions of pounds. These and similar incidents have brought sharply into focus the need to include an appraisal of human reliability and the factors which affect it when considering the safety performance of both large and small scale systems of work. ... 

With respect to plant safety, application of passive systems/components is intended to simplify the safety systems and to improve their reliability, to mitigate the effect of human errors and equipment failures, and to provide increased time to enable the operators to prevent or mitigate severe accidents. Natural circulation systems typically do not require or accommodate repair or maintenance work during power operation.Therefore, a reduced number of safety system trains may be needed to perform the designated safety function with the required reliability. An IAEA conference [1] included discussions on the safety of future plants, and noted that the use of passive safety systems is a desirable method of achieving simplification and increasing the reliability of the performance of essential safety functions, and should be used wherever appropriate. 

FMS s 2-day intensive medical TRM program introduces team members to the basic concepts of human performance, as used by the aviation industry in its attempts to understand and prevent crew errors, incidents and accidents. Using a variety of actual airline accident and medical incident case studies, program participants will learn about crew resomce management principles, and how CRM training has achieved positive safety results within the international airhne industry. 

---