The effect of human factors on safety related to barrier management

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to establish information on barrier elements where human errors take place and to establish proactive measures to eliminate these errors. The three main objectives for this project is to review the current safety and barrier management approach in Equinor, identify to what degree human factors have an impact on safety and make recommendations for improvements on safety and barrier management. The subject of human factors is an important part of this project. By studying accidents that has happened in the past, it was possible to identify many underlying reasons leading to the accidents that were related to both human behaviour and factors impacting on the course of events. The first part of the thesis is an extensive theoretical part. It covers the introduction, literature review with definitions on human factors, human errors and human engineering, and the different elements connected to barrier management. The research methodology provides information about the design and process of this paper, as well as the two different ways data have been collected. The second part consists of analysis and evaluation of information and data obtained from reading the accidents reports and from a questionnaire sent out to employees in Equinor. The results from both are shown in different graphs in chapter 5. During the discussion chapter the aim is to discuss around and provide conclusions to the research questions. The thesis concludes that an effort should be made to implement human factors, and that it should have a positive impact on both safety and barrier management in Equinor. The results show that the areas that would improve the most, when taking human factors into account, would be communication, competence, procedures, training and motivation.