HFOG 2015 - 1st International Conference on Human Factors in the Oil, Gas, and Nuclear Industries

Human Factors in the Oil, Gas, and Nuclear Industries aims to address the critical application of human factors knowledge to the design, construction and operation of oil and gas assets, to ensure that systems are designed in a way that optimizes human performance and minimizes risks to health, personal or process safety, or environmental performance. The conference focuses on delivering significant value to the design and operation of both onshore and offshore facilities
Energy companies study the role of human behavior for safety and accident prevention, however, third party providers and different operators have different standards and different expectations. While oil and gas exploration and production activities are carried out in hazardous environments in many parts of the world, offshore engineers are increasingly taking human factors into account when designing oil and gas equipment. Human factors such as machinery design, facility and accommodation layout and the organization of work activities have been systematically considered over the past twenty years on a limited number of offshore facility design projects to minimize the occupational risks to personnel, support operations and maintenance tasks and improve personnel wellbeing.
Despite the existence of these guidance and recommended design practices, and documented proof of their value in enhancing crew safety and efficiency, human factors is still not well understood across the industry and application across projects is inconsistent. Many human factors risks arise from errors or misunderstandings about the ways people think and reason about the situations they are facing and the risks involved; they are cognitive in nature. In order to reduce these risks, safety professionals need to know the important contribution that cognitive issues make in process safety and environmental incidents.
Better understanding for human factors issues also support the nuclear industry's move from analog to digital control rooms. Human considerations like lighting, temperature, even ergonomics, play important parts in the design. Human factors considerations are part of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s assessment of nuclear plant design and the licensing of its operators.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to those listed here:
Design of control rooms and facilities
Screening to define requirements at concept stage of a project life-cycle
Front End Engineering Design (FEED)
Assessment of Valve Criticality Analysis (VCA), Vendor Package Screening, Task Analysis (TA), Human Machine Interface (HMI)
Control room requirement analysis including alarm management and control room systems reviews
Offshore transport
Compliance with project HFE requirements
Development and review of procedures by systematically improving accuracy, readability and usability
Understanding the human contribution to accidents by using analytical investigation techniques to ensure human factors are fully considered when identifying the root causes of incidents and accidents; reviewing incident and accident data
Identify high priority and systemic human and organizational root causes for remediation
Situation awareness
Cognitive bias in decision-making
Inter-personal behavior
Awareness and understanding of safety-critical human tasks