Is Our Human Factors Capability in Aviation and Maritime Domains Up to the Task?

Abstract

It is often said by Human Factors professionals that Human Factors needs to be involved in design projects from the start. But how often is this feasible, and how often does it really occur in practice? And, perhaps most importantly, do design and operational organizations have the right people, processes and motivation in place to allow this to happen? As part of a European-funded project called SAFEMODE, which looks at the potential for cross-domain Human Factors learning in aviation and maritime domains, twelve organizations participated in a Human Factors Capability Profiling exercise. This paper gives an anonymized overview of the results, showing the range and differences in HF ‘maturity’ in the two domains. A key insight is that for both domains, there is a need for further uptake of validated HF methods that can inform design decisions at early design stages.