Changing Standards

This paper discusses standards and their inevitable changes in development and use. The conjecture is that rail human factors standards were once developed to raise awareness in nonexperts, are now being used by experts but in future will go full-circle to be used by a wider audience of systems engineers in the years to come. Human factors should aim to become truly integrated with rail systems standards. This will necessitate changes in the HF standards from the current emphasis on process and techniques to the importance of re-use of research, previous studies and appropriate designs