Elements of Human Factors Missing from Process Safety

Process safety is about controlling risk of failures and errors; controlling risk is primarily about reducing the risk of human error. All elements of Risk-Based Process Safety (RBPS) and alternative standards for process safety (such as US OSHA's standard for Process Safety Management [PSM] or ACC's Process Safety Code™ [PSC]) have many elements, and each of these in turn help to reduce the chance of human or else help to limit the impact of human error. But each process safety standard has some weakness in the control of human error.

This paper outlines a comprehensive process safety element on Human Factors and compares the sub-elements for human factors control with the existing elements of RBPS and PSC. It describes what belongs in each sub-element of Human Factors and explains the intent, content, and the benefit of each sub-element. The paper also presents examples of where Human Factors sub-elements have been properly implemented and discusses the problems faced during implementation.