Human factors questions are now part of the contract prequalification service. This means that all companies wishing to bid for work in the oil and gas sector should demonstrate human factors policy and how they apply human factors in seven different areas. A questionnaire has been developed for suppliers to present their capabilities to customers. The SPE Human Factors Technical Section has created a guide to the process.
The guide allows health, safety, and environment (HSE) professionals to compare their efforts against the existing human factors industry quickly. In addition, the document includes checklists based on good practice and examples of outputs, case studies, and templates.
“In the aviation sector, human factors contractual requirements for the supply chain have been in place for a long time now,” said Marcin Nazaruk, the chair of the SPE Human Factors Technical Section. “Including human factors in the contract prequalification process in oil and gas is a major milestone for the industry.”
Although recognized as important, the human factors discipline has been on the outskirts of safety management efforts. This is exemplified by the fact that human factors is not part of the HSE education and often is presented as something separate from the safety improvements efforts — an add-on that costs money and is a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.
This is changing.
The human factors prequalification questions ask companies to demonstrate how they integrate human factors concepts and tools with the following processes:
- Procedure management
- Accident investigations
- Risk assessment
- Proactive learning
- Behavioral safety
- Just culture and consequence management
- Human factors policy
Many companies, however, may need help benchmarking their efforts against good practice to identify opportunities for improvement.The guide is designed to help with precisely that.