A study of a technological development process: Human factors—the forgotten factors?

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore how human factors were taken into account in the development of a new type of drilling equipment. This study is part of a larger project on the understanding of human factors in the design and implementation of automated drilling technology. The principal study was a longitudinal study lasting 4 years that involved 43 interviews, offshore and onshore observations, and 2 surveys. MethodThe analysis in this paper is based on 7 informants who were either part of the design team or the paramount project team developing new automated drilling technology for an offshore oil-and gas-producing installation in the same development project, in addition to project documents. The informants were interviewed using semi-structured interviews, and grounded theory based on the coding process of Corbin and Strauss (1990) was used to analyse the data. 2 ResultsThe core category was found to be insufficient human factor analyses performed in the development phase due to the two main categories, namely 1) insufficient information coordination and 2) narrow focus in different phases of the project. This was found to contribute to increased costs, low user friendliness, and end users' insufficient knowledge of safe usage and potential risks. ConclusionOur conclusion was that homogenous top competence involving technical aspects contributed to developers' lack of understanding of the need for sufficient analyses of end user requirements and of the tasks that would be affected by the new technology. Hence, we argue that technological development could benefit from including human factors experts from the project's outset to bridge the gap between the lack of relevant information and sufficient information on which to base development decisions. In addition, we contend that performing human factors analyses throughout the development of a project would be beneficial due to the potential of hindering cultural aspects such as a non-questioning culture, which is viewed as a hazard in high-risk organizations.Keywords: human factors, human reliability, automated technology, safety, petroleum industry, technology development 3 IntroductionThe offshore oil and gas industry is considered a high-risk industry where minor incidents can lead to major accidents; thus, safety is a main priority (Årstad et al., 2010).Consequences of non-successful development and implementation of new technology have the potential of resulting in unwanted incidents and, in worst-case scenarios, major accidents.Because studies from the nuclear industry show that between 20 and 50% of incidents involve design mistakes (Taylor, 2007), it is important to involve strategies that ensure safety in technological development projects. Traditionally, the focus on safety in the development of new technology has been on technical aspects. Although lately there has been a growing focus on the human end users of the technology (ISO 11064, 2000;NORSOK, 2004 Saetren and Laumann (2015a) conducted a study where they found that too much trus...

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