Planning for Cost Effective Human Factors Engineering and System Safety

The application of human factors is intended to ensure that people are integrated into the system design safely, effectively and reliably. As the benefits are recognised, human factors increasingly forms part of both contractual requirements and safety assurance for major programmes. Through the use of a case study, this paper discusses how the application of human factors engineering methods, techniques and standards support design for system safety. It also emphasises the need for ensuring human factors activities are scoped and planned early in the programme in order to be cost effective.