Led by Dr Ruby Roberts, the 5-year project aims to support the growth of the renewable energy sector through human factors research that facilitates worker performance, safety and training.
Human factors are generally understood to have originated from military aviation in World War II a method of reducing pilot error, improving human performance, personnel selection and facilitating training.
Gaining traction in commercial aviation, human factors and ergonomic principles have since been adopted in a wide range of sectors. This includes healthcare (referred to as patient safety), energy production such as nuclear power and oil and gas, and transport (rail, shipping). Investigations into both major accidents and industry incident data often identify human factors as root causes.
Given the differences in working environments and tasks, each industry develops research-grounded solutions that support their workers with the aim of improving safety and efficiency .
Human factors are commonly understood to relate to the human and individual characteristics , environmental/job and wider organisational factors which influence behaviour at work which can affect safe, efficient and cost-effective performance. In short it relates to the person, the job that they are being asked to do, and where they are working.
A suite of scientific methods from different disciplines, including psychology, engineering, ergonomics and physiology, are used to identify the specific human factors relevant to a particular task or industry characteristics. Learn more about these below.
Individual factors typically relate to a person’s competence, skills (technical and non-technical), personality, attitudes (general attitudes or safety related) and risk perception. It can also relate to how a person copes with performance shaping factors such as stress, fatigue or seasickness. Recent research in the wind industry has found that cognitive factors, including situation awareness and decision making, social skills for front-line managers, and personal resource skills are essential for safe and effective performance.
Task and environmental factors typically relate to a type of task, workload, the working environment, the design of displays and controls, and the role of procedures.
Physiological and psychological research in the wind industry has found that workload, physical stressors (ladder climbing and casualty evacuation), and environmental conditions (weather, noise and motion) can all affect worker safety, wellbeing, cognitive function and productivity.
Organisational factors can relate to the culture of the workplace, policies and resources, communications and leadership. This includes the organisation’s safety culture.
Managers’ safety leadership, organisational culture, policies, procedures & health and safety management, and training were all identified as key organisational factors for influencing safety and productivity in the wind sector.
Team factors typically relate to the group’s skills and ability to work together, such as communication, shared understanding, social skills and supervision.
A recent scoping review confirmed the importance of recognising the team category in the wind industry. Working in small crews of 3-4 wind technicians, teamwork, team situation awareness and communication were found to be key skills.
Human Factors approaches are particularly pertinent to the wind industry because of the combination of contextual characteristics such as the remote, hazardous environment, awkward working conditions and small multi-skilled teams with limited communication and supervision. Yet, there is limited understanding of what these factors are and how they influence health, safety and productivity.
The five-year Chancellor’s Fellowship, supported by Robert Gordon University, addresses this gap through a programme of human factors research designed to support safety standards and training practices across the wind sector.
Aerial view of wind turbines at sea, North Holland, Netherlands 
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