Business operations are generally better engineered today than in the 20th century, with more activities automated for quality control, cost savings and efficiency. But some things haven’t changed: human beings are still involved and continue to be sources of variability and uncertainty in high-risk activities, including manufacturing, power generation, logistics and transportation.
- Three-Mile Island was exacerbated by human error, the failure to correctly interpret signals from their instruments.
- In 2004, a major liquefied natural gas plant explosion affected 2% of global production when ineffective shutdown processes failed to prevent a boiler explosion and an even larger secondary explosion.
- The 2019 Notre Dame Cathedral fire burned for half an hour between the first alarm and the fire department being called.
With technology and software rapidly improving, what can we do to reduce errors by people, who evolve along much longer time scales than technology and are subject to a host of factors that influence their activities on a daily basis?
Human as the ‘weakest link’…
First, let’s look at the baseline. FM tracks commercial property loss data, and consistently over time it shows that human error has contributed to 7 out of 10 of the largest fire, boiler & machinery losses at client locations around the world.
Forty percent (40%) of the risk improvement measures we recommend to clients involve avoiding potential human error or acting to avoid adverse consequences.
… and could be an even bigger loss factor
Human error is poised to become a bigger problem in the near future with projected GDP growth. Why? As the economy grows, new jobs are created, stretching the talent pool thin. Deregulation and workforce reductions could also increase risk.
Yet talent is desperately needed today in virtually all industries, especially those with complex and high-consequence operations. As baby boomers retire, talented STEM graduates have generally gravitated to high-tech jobs in cubicles rather than gain experience from the factory floor.
This is critical information for business owners and investors. As companies set out to improve performance, are they cutting workforces to their long-term detriment? Or are they investing in resilience in the form of staff that have a similar deep knowledge of the functions and processes that prior generations developed over years of experience? The knowledge from years of experience is key, not only in avoiding the mistakes that cause losses and downtime, but also in knowing how best to diagnose an off-normal event and respond accordingly.
Risk-reducing strategies
Here are some of the first lines of defense against human error:
- Formalize policies, rules, guidelines, standard operating procedures, etc. It’s essential to put expectations, best practices and rules in writing and distribute them to operators and supervisors.
- Train and assess. To improve the chances of published rules and procedures being followed, it’s important to train operators to apply the rules to real-life scenarios, both common and unexpected. Training is even more important than the manual. Track learning success and course correct as necessary.
- Recruit intentionally. Given the rise in artificial intelligence, robotics, automated processes and other efficiency measures, human operator responsibilities will change, not disappear. New skills gaps will emerge. Develop a strategy for identifying gaps, filling your employee pipeline and retaining people you hire.
- Understand human behavior. My team is beginning work with social and engineering science specialists around the world to more deeply understand risk-relevant human activities and apply human-friendly means of reducing the risks. The opportunity to apply current knowledge and develop new, relevant means to help reduce the human side of risk can have tremendous impact on a company’s bottom line, as well as employee retention and job satisfaction.
There’s been a lot of conversation about how AI will fuel increased automation, and it’s valid. But human beings are still very involved in high-hazard activities and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Their jobs are becoming more technical, and their numbers are being reduced, but the decisions they make are potentially more important than ever for keeping businesses on track.
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