Human Factors Software that optimises your most critical tasks

Learn how our industry-leading SHERPA human factors software can improve safety, quality and efficiency across your business

SHERPA software helps you optimise your organisation’s most critical tasks and reduce human error.

Human factors software essential for safety-critical and high consequence sectors such as:

Oil, gas, chemicals, and power generation (conventional and nuclear) that need to be protected against Major Accident Hazards. (Regulator: HSE).

Pharma manufacturing where human-caused quality or manufacturing failures carry high costs. (Regulators: FDA, MHRA).

Defence and healthcare where systems have high exposure to potential human error hazards. (Regulators: MOD, MHRA, QCC).

Medical device design to maximise operability, minimise use error leading to medical accidents, and minimise device recalls and redesign.

Other sectors that want to reduce the risks of human error and optimise human performance for procedural tasks. 

How SHERPA Works

The SHERPA human factors software package integrates several different modules to help you stay on top of all the most critical tasks and improve human reliability. 

Risk Ranking

Easily generate Risk Matrices to indicate areas of greatest concern and prioritise risk management efforts.

  • Quickly evaluate the areas where human errors will have the most severe consequences.
  • Output a Risk Ranking Index based on likelihood of error and severity of consequences, helping you prioritise tasks or subtasks to address first in your analysis.
  • Include the likelihood of error recovery or consequence mitigation, allowing you to adjust your screening criteria as needed.
  • Apply the Risk Ranking Index directly to any box in the Hierarchical Task Analysis (see below) to save time and avoid duplicated effort.
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Risk Ranking

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Easily generate Risk Matrices to indicate areas of greatest concern and prioritise risk management efforts.

  • Quickly evaluate the areas where human errors will have the most severe consequences.
  • Output a Risk Ranking Index based on likelihood of error and severity of consequences, helping you prioritise tasks or subtasks to address first in your analysis.
  • Include the likelihood of error recovery or consequence mitigation, allowing you to adjust your screening criteria as needed.
  • Apply the Risk Ranking Index directly to any box in the Hierarchical Task Analysis (see below) to save time and avoid duplicated effort.
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Graphically map safety or quality critical tasks as they are performed in practice, using interactive inputs from frontline staff. 

Hierarchical Task Analysis & Human Factors Risk Analysis

  • Conduct the human factors risk assessments required by many regulatory authorities, including the COMAH Safety Cases required by the Health and Safety Executive in the UK.
  • Carry out Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) to systematically document tasks.
  • Create a graphical representation of the overall task goal, subtasks, and the steps within these subtasks, to the level of detail required for the application.
  • Conduct Workload Analysis of specific scenarios to help reduce overload (or underload) to within safe working limits.
  • Generate a table for use as a starting point for the development of risk-aware procedures, training aids, and risk analyses.
  • Conduct Predictive Human Error Analysis (PHEA) by evaluating the steps in the HTA to help identify any possible failure modes.
  • Explore the consequences of errors so you can document appropriate error prevention strategies.

Hierarchical Task Analysis & Human Factors Risk Analysis

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Graphically map safety or quality critical tasks as they are performed in practice, using interactive inputs from frontline staff. 

  • Conduct the human factors risk assessments required by many regulatory authorities, including the COMAH Safety Cases
    required by the Health and Safety Executive in the UK.
  • Carry out Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) to systematically document tasks.
  • Create a graphical representation of the overall task goal, subtasks, and the steps within these subtasks, to the level of detail required for the application.
  • Conduct Workload Analysis of specific scenarios to help reduce overload (or underload) to within safe working limits.
  • Generate a table for use as a starting point for the development of risk-aware procedures, training aids, and risk analyses.
  • Conduct Predictive Human Error Analysis (PHEA) by evaluating the steps in the HTA to help identify any possible failure modes.
  • Explore the consequences of errors so you can document appropriate error prevention strategies.

Failure Mode / Performance Influencing Factors (PIF) Analysis

Identify potential failures through failure mode analysis and analyse the Performance Influencing Factors that affect their likelihood of occurrence.

  • Generate potential failure types (e.g. action omitted, communication failure) and their consequences based on the types of activities being carried out (e.g. actions, checks, data entry, monitoring). A comprehensive library of failure modes is provided.
  • Use PIF analyses to assess the factors, identified by human factors research, which affect the likelihood of a failure arising. An extensive library of PIFs is provided for assessing the failure modes included in the SHERPA tool.
  • Built-in categories of error include multiple types of action, communication, and checking failures.
  • Add or edit factors to include context-specific PIFs that need to be considered in the analysis.
  • Guide and enhance the development of effective error reduction strategies.
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Failure Mode / Performance Influencing Factors (PIF) Analysis

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Identify potential failures through failure mode analysis and analyse the Performance Influencing Factors that affect their likelihood of occurrence.

  • Generate potential failure types (e.g. action omitted, communication failure) and their consequences based on the types of activities being carried out (e.g. actions, checks, data entry, monitoring). A comprehensive library of failure modes is provided.
  • Use PIF analyses to assess the factors, identified by human factors research, which affect the likelihood of a failure arising. An extensive library of PIFs is provided for assessing the failure modes included in the SHERPA tool.
  • Built-in categories of error include multiple types of action, communication, and checking failures.
  • Add or edit factors to include context-specific PIFs that need to be considered in the analysis.
  • Guide and enhance the development of effective error reduction strategies.

Swimlane or Sequentially Timed Event Plot (STEP) Diagramming

Easily switch between HTA and time line analyses to see the order of events, parallel activities, and to investigate timing issues.

  • Automatically generate a timeline of the events in any task, and who conducts which steps, from HTAs generated in SHERPA.
  • Conduct link analysis to evaluate the physical locations of the steps in a task or scenario and the locations of the equipment being accessed.
  • Reconstruct accident sequences for investigation, linking events to show how they led to the ultimate outcome.
  • Gain insight into the flow of a product (or a person) through a system such as a manufacturing plant or a hospital.
  • Map the sequence of a process from end to end to identify how different operations and tasks could fail.
  • Identify hand over points, which are known to carry a high risk of failure.
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Swimlane or Sequentially Timed Event Plot (STEP) Diagramming

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Easily switch between HTA and time line analyses to see the order of events, parallel activities, and to investigate timing issues.

  • Automatically generate a timeline of the events in any task, and who conducts which steps, from HTAs generated in SHERPA.
  • Conduct link analysis to evaluate the physical locations of the steps in a task or scenario and the locations of the equipment being accessed.
  • Reconstruct accident sequences for investigation, linking events to show how they led to the ultimate outcome.
  • Gain insight into the flow of a product (or a person) through a system such as a manufacturing plant or a hospital.
  • Map the sequence of a process from end to end to identify how different operations and tasks could fail.
  • Identify hand over points, which are known to carry a high risk of failure.

Human Error Probability Assessment

Systematically investigate the potential for human error at each step in the HTA, evaluate the factors that increase and reduce the likelihood of that failure, and identify improvements.

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  • Conduct Predictive Human Error Analysis (PHEA) to identify and reduce risks from human factors.
  • Swiftly quantify human error probabilities (HEPs) for a task mapped in the HTA as a function of the quality of PIFs.
  • Determine the overall probability of task failure driven by PIFs which may vary over time, e.g. fatigue, and variability of distractions or multitasking demands. 
  • Use the connected data grid to help structure your Human Reliability Assessment thinking, keeping the analysis organised, encouraging insight, ready to be exported
  • Integrate analyses using Fault Tree logic to derive an overall probability of failure for the whole task.
  • Investigate and simulate how Human Error Probability varies over time with changes in dynamic Performance Influencing Factors.
  • Easily measure the impact on HEPs of any improvements you implement.

Human Error Probability Assessment

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Systematically investigate the potential for human error at each step in the HTA, evaluate the factors that increase and reduce the likelihood of that failure, and identify improvements.

  • Conduct Predictive Human Error Analysis (PHEA) to identify and reduce risks from human factors.
  • Swiftly quantify human error probabilities (HEPs) for a task mapped in the HTA as a function of the quality of PIFs.
  • Determine the overall probability of task failure driven by PIFs which may vary over time, e.g. fatigue, and variability of distractions or multitasking demands. 
  • Use the connected data grid to help structure your Human Reliability Assessment thinking, keeping the analysis organised,
    encouraging insight, ready to be exported.
  • Integrate analyses using Fault Tree logic to derive an overall probability of failure for the whole task.
  • Investigate and simulate how Human Error Probability varies over time with changes in dynamic. Performance Influencing Factors.
  • Easily measure the impact on HEPs of any improvements you implement.

Root Cause Analysis for Incident Investigation

Investigate multiple causal factors that contributed to an incident, but also potential failures and vulnerabilities that could play a role in other incidents too.

  • Analyse the direct and organisational causes of errors as part of any incident investigation.
  • Examine the sequence of events in an incident, based on HTAs or Swimlane diagrams for the tasks under investigation.
  • Identify where in a process failures occurred, and what category of error led to each failure.
  • Explore the typical causal factors for the specific error category or type of activity in question.
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Root Cause Analysis for Incident Investigation

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Investigate multiple causal factors that contributed to an incident, but also potential failures and vulnerabilities that could play a role in other incidents too.

  • Analyse the direct and organisational causes of errors as part of any incident investigation.
  • Examine the sequence of events in an incident, based on HTAs or Swimlane diagrams for the tasks under investigation.
  • Identify where in a process failures occurred, and what category of error led to each failure.
  • Explore the typical causal factors for the specific error category or type of activity in question.

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Want to see SHERPA in action and learn how it can support your organisation? Request a quick demo of our human factors software today.