Effective safety management goes beyond engineering controls. Human and organisational factors — the ways in which people, teams and organisations interact with systems and each other — are consistently identified as significant contributors to major accident events across high hazard industries.

SGL provides access to specialist HOF technical experts who can be embedded into your engineering projects and operations. Our associates bring extensive experience applying HOF across oil and gas, petrochemical, offshore wind and COMAH-regulated environments.

Our Core Human Factors Services

• Human Factors Engineering: We support engineering teams in applying human factors principles throughout the design lifecycle. Our consultants ensure that systems, interfaces, procedures and workplaces are designed with the capabilities and limitations of operators firmly in mind — reducing error potential and improving performance from concept through to commissioning. Key activities include:

  • Human Factors Integration (HFI) planning and delivery

  • Control room and HMI design review

  • Task analysis and procedure assessment

  • Alarm management reviews

  • Usability evaluation and design verification

• Human Reliability Analysis (HRA): We conduct structured HRA to identify, assess and quantify human error within safety-critical tasks and operations. Using recognised methodologies, we integrate human failure analysis into your wider risk assessments and barrier models — providing defensible, auditable outputs for regulators and duty holders. Key activities include:

  • Systematic human error identification (SHERPA, HAZOP extensions)

  • Human failure event (HFE) identification and screening

  • Quantified HRA using HEART, THERP or SPAR-H

  • Integration with QRA, LOPA and barrier models

  • Regulatory submission support

• Organisational Factors & Safety Culture: Organisational influences — leadership, communication, workload, competency management and safety culture — are consistently identified as causal factors in major accidents. We help clients assess and strengthen these systemic factors, supporting continuous improvement and demonstrating organisational learning to regulators. Key activities include:

  • Organisational factors assessment frameworks

  • Safety culture evaluation and benchmarking

  • Competency assurance and management systems review

  • Fatigue risk and shift pattern assessment

  • Incident investigation — organisational root cause analysis

• HOF in Safety Cases & Compliance Assurance: Regulators & investors increasingly expect HOF to be meaningfully addressed within safety cases, safety reports and compliance assurance. Our experts provide HOF input that is proportionate, evidence-based and aligned with current regulatory expectations — ensuring your safety case reflects a credible and thorough understanding of human and organisational risk. Key activities include:

  • HOF input to HSE safety cases (SCR / DCR)

  • COMAH safety report HOF chapter development

  • HOF gap analysis against HSE regulatory guidance

  • Response to HOF-related regulatory improvement notices

  • HOF in performance standards and critical task identification

Managing the Human Contribution to Risk