electrical safety | daniel doan
Human Error
and Electrical Safety
H
uman error is found to
be a contributing factor
in many investigations
of electrical fatalities,
injuries, and incidents.
The most common corrective action
written in many investigation reports
is to increase or improve training.
The planned corrective action might
be for management to make sure that
each worker has read the procedures
and is tested or checked for under-
standing. But is training by itself an
adequate step to ensure the safety of
IEEE In dustry A p plication s M ag az in e • mar |apr 2016 • www.ieee.or g/ia s
our workers from electrical hazards?
As engineers, we can explain the
behavior of our electrical system and
equipment at a more detailed level
than human behavior, which is much
more complex. How well training
really works is a function of human
learning and behavior. During the
training, do you know whether the
trainees are paying attention? Is your
training program out of date so that
the trainees just go through the
motions, thinking that it doesn’t
apply to them? An online slide show
that the worker rushes through may
not be very effective. Perhaps he or
she is distracted by other issues at
work or by problems at home, or
some trainees may not learn very well
from visual media. In a recent phar-
maceutical company study, research-
ers found that the use of training to
mitigate human error solved the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIAS.2015.2503941
Date of publication: 10 February 2016
problem only 53% of the time. So
almost one half of the time, the
researchers found that there were
repeated errors.
Certainly, training is important,
but perhaps it should only be part of
the solution. What about the proce-
dures workers are expected to follow?
Are they confusing, or do they have
extra steps that aren’t needed? Are
they out of date? Could the proce-
dures be simplified or improved so
that there would be a smaller chance
of an error? During the job, there are
many distractions that can increase
the chances of errors. There may be
stressful situations when workers are
pushed to complete a job in a certain
time period. The worker may be
thinking about something else and
missing a key lockout. We should
provide clearly written and accurate
instructions as part of electrical job
plans to help reduce human error.
Another area is design—inherently
safer designs can reduce the chance of
a worker making a mistake. Equip-
ment that is laid out in a logical
sequence and clearly labeled in the
worker’s language can go a long way
to ensure that the proper sequence of
steps is completed correctly. Other
design features, such as touch-safe ter-
minals and low arc-flash energy, would
reduce the chance of a worker being
injured if a mistake is made. How can
we make our procedures and plans
robust enough so that if a mistake is
made the worker won’t be injured?
There are many technical papers
on human error if you search for
them—written from the viewpoint
of many industries, from air traffic
control and aviation to nuclear
power. In many of those industries,
the result of a single human error can
be injury to others. With electrical
hazards, the person making the mis-
take is often the one who is shocked
or burned. Perhaps part of the train-
ing for our electrical workers should
be to teach them about the reasons
and risks of human error and help
them do their part to eliminate those
errors. They might recognize when
they are tired or distracted so that
they are aware that there is a higher
risk for a human error occurring and
can take steps to reduce that risk.
Learn more about the possible
ways your workers can make errors,
and try to improve your design, pro-
cedures, and training to reduce those
risks. One source of information is
the many technical papers published
on IEEE Xplore. One paper of note on
this topic was presented at the 2015
IEEE/IAS Electrical Safety Work-
shop. “Electrical Safety: A Program
Development Guide” was published
in the September/October 2015 issue
of IEEE Transactions on Industry Appli-
cations. Authored by Becker and
Davis, the paper discusses many of
the steps for developing an electrical
safety program to reduce human
error and is a good reference for any-
one who wishes to learn more about
this topic.
 IAS