Center for Safety and human factors, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Employees at the Center for Safety and human factors are:
- Britt-Marie Drottz Sjøberg (Professor)
- Karin Laumann (Associate professor)
- Gunhild Sætren (PhD Candidate)
- Thomas Wold (PhD Candidate
- Martin Rasmussen (PhD Candidate)
- Vibeke Milch (PhD Candidate)
Our research group has three main areas of focus:
Safety
- Major accidents
- Safety in high risk organizations
- Petroleum related safety
- Implementation of new technology
- Societal safety
Human Factors
- Governing systems
- Implementation of new technology
- Complexity
- Control rooms
Risk
- Risk perception
- Risk communication
- Human reliability analysis
Current Projects
At the moment, Center for Safety and human factors has four main research projects. The projects are funded by The Research Council of Norway and Norwegian industry partners (such as Statoil, DNV, Shell, ConocoPhillips, GDF). The four projects are:
1) IO for Proactive Environmental Protection (IOPEP): Smart solutions for development, visualisation & integration of dependable work processes».
2) E-centre laboratories for automated drilling processes (ELAD)
3) Analysis of human actions as barriers in major accidents in the petroleum industry, applicability of human reliability analysis methods (Petro-HRA)
4) Interorganisational Complexity and Risk of Major Accidents
1) IO for Proactive Environmental Protection (IOPEP): Smart solutions for development, visualisation & integration of dependable work processes.
Thomas Wold is PhD candidate on this project. Karin Laumann is NTNU project manager and PhD supervisor of this project.
An IT-based Safety Management System contains procedures, safety standards and checklists and descriptions on how different tasks should be performed. Safety standards and work procedures are typically designed at an executive level in the organization, and then communicated to the lower level in the organization which applies them. How is this information perceived and understood at the receiving end?
In the research literature on procedures and Safety Management Systems it seems that the matter of interpretation has been neglected. The tendency is to regard Safety Management Systems and the procedures as tools that just need to be put to good use. As tools they don`t require any interpretation, just a little bit of training. An IT-based Safety Management System should be analysed as a communication system, with mediated messages travelling from the top levels of the organizational hierarchy downwards to the lower levels.
When the informants in this study try to explain the purpose of the Safety Management System they tend to focus more on responsibility than on safety, and see the Safety Management System as a way for the management to cover their backs in case of accidents. Although they acknowledge that the Safety Management System is supposed to be ensure safety, most of them are not able to explain exactly how it is supposed to do so. This has an effect on how they understand the Safety Management System as less important, and negatively influences their motivation for use. The attitude is that they can do their job properly without using the Safety Management System and check the procedures. This diminishes the respect for the procedures, in an organizational culture that allows this to happen. They do not seem to underestimate the importance of safety and the need for safety measures. They just struggle to see exactly how the Safety Management System can improve safety, at least on their own behalf.
Research should investigate further how operators on installations (or other places) relate to a Safety Management System, work processes and safety procedures; how they understand and interpret this, and how their interpretation affects the use of management systems.
2) E-centre laboratories for automated drilling processes (ELAD)
Gunhild Sætren is PhD candidate on this project.Karin Laumann is NTNU project manager and PhD supervisor of this project.
The purpose of this project was to explore factors that could make a safest possible change process in high risk industries. The change process followed was an implementation of automated drilling technology on an offshore oil and gas installation. From November 2008 till July 2012, 43 interviews were conducted with personnel ranging from the designers to end users, and observations were done offshore. Grounded theory was used for analysis.
Article 1: This article (Sætren & Laumann, 2012) treated how trust affected the outcome of the change process. It was found that according to the change theory of Armenakis and Harris (2009) it was a successful change process. However it was also found that the end users had too much trust and a non-questioning attitude to safety during the implementation process. These results were compared to the theory of high reliability organizations (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007) and it was concluded that too much trust and a non-questioning attitude could reduce safety.
Article 2: The purpose of this study was to investigate safety aspects of a design team’s work processes and the outcome of the design process. The specific research question was: How are safety through human factors and human reliability ensured during a design process of automated technology in a high-risk industry? The results were that human factors and human reliability analyses could have prevented unwanted outcomes. As a conclusion we argued that it should be better guidelines for which analyses to be conducted in which phases of a design project and how the analyses should be performed (Sætren, Hogenboom, & Laumann, 2013).
Article 3: This article will concern how the informants perceived the safety of the technology prior to and after a serious unwanted incident that occurred whilst using the new technology.
References:
Armenakis, A. & Harris, S.G. (2009). Reflections: our journey in organizational change research and practice. Journal of Change Management, 9(2), pp. 127-142.
Sætren, G.B. & Laumann, K. (2012). Effects of trust in high-risk organizations during technological changes. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Sætren, G.B., Hogenboom, S., & Laumann, K. (2013). Effects of insufficient human factors-, and human reliability analyses in design processes of automated technology for high-risk industries. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Weick, K. & Sutcliffe, K. (2007). Managing the unexpected. Resilient performance in an age of uncertainty. (2. ed.) San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass.
3) Analysis of human actions as barriers in major accidents in the petroleum industry, applicability of human reliability analysis methods (Petro-HRA)
Martin Rasmussen is PhD candidate on this project. Karin Laumann is project manager and PhD supervisor of this project.
Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA; also called Probabilistic Risk Assessment) is one of the most important parts of understanding the total risk picture in many high-risk industries such as petroleum, aerospace and nuclear. Traditionally the QRA has focused on technical aspects with little focus on the human element. This is particularly true for the petroleum industry, and in this project (Petro-HRA) we are adapting human reliability analysis (HRA) methodology form an industry that has already come a long way in including human factors in their analysis, the nuclear industry. Quantification of human error probabilities is often a part of HRA methods. The Standardized Plant Analysis Risk Human Reliability Analysis (SPAR-H) method has been selected for adaptation of the quantification part of the adapted HRA method. All aspects of this method will be reviewed and adapted to the petroleum industry. The project will also create guidelines for: qualitative data collection, modeling of human error and how to give recommendations to the QRA
4) Interorganisational Complexity and Risk of Major Accidents
Vibeke Milch is PhD candidate on this project. Karin Laumann is project manager and PhD supervisor of this project.
Both internationally and at the NCS, there is a trend towards exploration and production in more challenging locations (i.e. deeper, marginaland more complex fields, deepwater and subsea operations, and more challenging wells) that result in an increase in technological complexity. This development also constitute the basis for substantial HSE challenges in the industry. In particular, technological complexity requires work process specialization, which again result in an increase in the amount of interorganisational interaction and cooperation in offshore drilling and well activities. In spite of this, safety research in the petroleum industry has not yet been concerned with challenges related to interorganisational complexity. In order for the petroleum industry to be world leading in HSE work, knowledge generated from research addressing these issues is fundamental. Based on this acknowledgement, this project will analyse the potential for serious accidents in the complex interorganisational processes in drilling and well activities. More specifically, we will analyse 1) how safety issues are related to formal and informal coordination of work in interorganisational systems (e.g. authority issues, process/work descriptions, standards, etc.); 2) conditions for and safety effects of knowledge sharing within and between organisations; and 3) management and safety effects of interorganisational industrial relations. The research will contribute to new knowledge and new methods that can reduce risk and increase resilience in the petroleum industry. It will also contribute to better understanding of the challenges of implementing regulatory standards and provisions in interorganisational constellations.
Virtuell Katarsis 