The design of an accident investigation procedure

✍ Scribed by Mary Edwards

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 570 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-6870
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-6870(81)90178-2

✦ Synopsis

In August 1980, a joint meeting of the lEA and the NES was held in Oslo to discuss "Ergonomics in Action -From Theory to Practice" and papers were invited to illustrate this theme. It is the burden of this paper that ergonomics is not widely practised partly because the model of application implied in the conference theme is inappropriate and partly because ergonomists tend to be laboratory-rather than problem-centred. Some of the constraints associated with problem-centred research in organisations are discussed and a particular problem of applied ergonomics, as it relates to the design of accident investigation procedures, is described.

Ergonomists frequently complain, with justification, that ergonomics is overlooked by industry and commerce, that designers do not take proper account of the human operator, that man is the last system element to be considered. Why has ergonomics failed to make an impact after 30 years? Why is the transition from Theory to Practice proving so difficult?