Human Factors in Major Accident Hazard Regulation and Guidance: A Descriptive Overview

Human Factors are now central to managing major accident risk. But how are they actually embedded in regulation and guidance around the world?
The Railway Men of Bhopal: How Recovery Shaped the Impact of Disaster

Inspired by The Railway Men, this blog uses the Accident Sequence and Precursor (ASAP) model to show how post-incident actions can feed into organisational learning and recovery, helping to build more resilient systems, and why these lessons remain relevant for today’s high-hazard industries.
How SCTA Builds Reliability and Resilience: A Whole-System Approach to Understanding Work

Reliability prevents failure.
Resilience helps us recover from it.
SCTA can strengthen both.
Human Factors in Control of Work Systems

Control of Work (CoW) systems form the backbone of safe operations in high-hazard industries. Yet, their success often hinges on human interaction.
Bridging the Gap: Aligning SCTA with Engineering Risk Assessments

Are your Safety Critical Task Analyses (SCTAs) operating in isolation from your other Major Accident Hazard Risk Assessments? You might be missing opportunities to strengthen your ALARP demonstration.
Human Factors in Turnarounds: Key findings and lessons learned

Turnarounds are planned events where significant sections of a process plant are shut down to enable maintenance or projects to be carried out. Despite being planned events, they are inherently non-routine and resource intensive.
HSE Human Factors Delivery Guide for COMAH sites: What’s new?

The HSE released a new Human Factors Delivery Guide for COMAH sites in December 2023. However, there was no briefing note or presentation to accompany it to tell us what was different and what was the same.
A year on, I’m writing that blog to attempt to fill that gap.
Tackling Procedural Non-Compliance in the Workplace: Insights and Solutions

Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) are essential, but why do operators deviate from them? Our Managing Director, David Embrey, explores how non-compliance may not always be about negligence, but rather systemic challenges and opportunities for process improvement.
Checking, checks, second checks, double checks and independent checks

In this deep dive, we explore the critical role of checking in detecting and correcting errors, especially in safety-critical industries.
Human Factors Regulations in Singapore: A comparison with the UK

In 2017, Singapore introduced the Safety Case Regime under the Workplace Safety and Health (Major Hazards Installations) Regulations, marking a pivotal step toward strengthening safety at facilities handling hazardous substances. This approach aligns closely with the UK’s HF Delivery Guide under the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) Regulations.