REPUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN

REPUBLIC OF CAMEROON
Paix-Travail-Patrie
Peace-Work-Fatherland
********
********
MINISTERE DE
MINISTRY OF HIGHER
L’ENSEIGNEMENT SUPERIEUR
EDUCATION

TOPIC

ORGANIZATIONAL AND TECHNICAL FACTOR OF INDUSTRIAL SAFETY

Speciality :
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Presented by :
TCHEMO ISRAEL JUNIOR(CT23P064)
KETONE PRINCE LEKU(CT23P065)

INSTRUCTOR: DR. MBIEDA PETMEGNI

ACADEMIC YEAR 2023-2024

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ iii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................... iii
LIST OF ABREVIATION ........................................................................................................................ iv
SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1
Industrial safety........................................................................................................................................ 1
Importance of industrial safety ............................................................................................................... 1
Objectives of industrial safety: ................................................................................................................ 1
Safety Organization: ................................................................................................................................. 2
SECTION 2: HUMAN & ORGANIZATIONAL FACTOR (HOF)...................................................... 3
1) WHAT PLACE IS GIVEN TO HOF IN INDUSTRIAL SAFETY?................................................................... 3
2) HOW TO MAKE HOF EXIST? ....................................................................................................... 4
Incomplete Root Cause Analysis ............................................................................................................... 5
Organizational Factor ................................................................................................................................ 6
Human Factors ............................................................................... 8
ELEMENT OF SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ADRESSING HOFS ............................................................... 9
Regulator’s Role ........................................................................................................................................ 10
REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................................... 11

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 ABSTRACT

The purpose of human and organizational factor in an industry is to permit us to know how the
worker are working, these means if they are working following the safety precaution, why did
the accident occur in the workplace and design new system to avoid the industrial accident.
Human and organizational factor is implemented in industry for safety by knowing these 03
factors when implementing it, which are:
 The type of organizational structure or system safety you want to implement in the
industry to avoid potential hazard.
 The type of activities carry out in the industry.
 There type of system which you will use to analyse the potential root causes of hazard

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Balanced attention .......................................................................................................................... 6

Figure 2 HIERACHY ........................................................................................................................................ 7
Figure 3 ORGANIZATION & TECHNICAL SYSTEM .......................................................................................... 8
Figure 4 FACTORS THAT AFFECT HUMAN BEHAVIOR ................................................................................... 9
Figure 5 REGULATORS ................................................................................................................................. 10

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 LIST OF ABREVIATION

HOF: Human and organizational factor.

OHF: Organisational and human factor.
NPP: Non-physician practioner.
SMS: Safety management system.
HOT: Human, organizational and technical factor.

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 SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION

Industrial safety

Definition:
Industrial safety is primarily a management activity which is concerned with reducing,
controlling and eliminating hazards from the industries or industrial units.

Importance of industrial safety

The danger of life of human being is increasing with advancement of scientific

development in different fields.
The importance of industrial safety was realized because every millions of industrial
accidents occur which result in either death or in temporary disablement or permanent
disablement of employees and involve large amount of losses resulting from danger to
property, wasted man hours and wasted hours.
More ever, from managerial perspective the importance of industrial safety in any
organization may be concluded by following facilitation:
1. Treatment: industrial safety management provides treatment for injuries and
illness at the work place.
2. Medical Examination: it carries out medical examination of staff joining the
organization or returning to work after sickness or accident.
3. Hazards identification.
4. Provision of protective devices.
5. Consultancy: it provides medical advised on other condition potentially affecting
health e.g. works canteen etc.
6. Education: it provides safety and health training.

Objectives of industrial safety:

1. To prevent accidents in the plant by reducing the hazard to minimum.

2. To eliminate accident caused work stoppage and lost production.
3. To achieve lower workmen’s compensation, insurance rates and reduce all other
direct and indirect costs of accidents.
4. To prevent loss of life, permanent disability and the loss of income of worker by
eliminating causes of accidents.
5. To evaluate employee’s morale by promoting safe work place and good working
condition.
6. To educate all members of the organization in continuous state of safety mindness
and to make supervision competent and intensely safety ninded.
A safety programmed includes mainly following four E’s.
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 Engineering: i.e safety at the design, equipment installation stage. Education: i.e.
education of employees in safe practices.
 Enlistment: it concerns the attitude of the employees and management to wards the
programmed and its purpose. Ti is necessary to arouse the interest of employees in
accident prevention and safety consciousness.
 Encouragement: i.e. to enforce adherence to safe rules and practices.

Safety Organization:
Definition: safety organization may be defined as organization taking in the work of
accident prevention. It means that it has to remove unsafe physical conditions and
substitute safety practices in the place of unsafe practices.
Essential Elements: the basic elements regarding the safety organization are as under:
1. management leadership
2. assignment of responsibility
3. maintenance of safe working conditions
4. establishment of safety training
5. an accident record system
6. medical and first aid system.
7. acceptance of personal responsibilities by employees.

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 SECTION 2: HUMAN & ORGANIZATIONAL FACTOR (HOF)
1) WHAT PLACE IS GIVEN TO HOF IN INDUSTRIAL SAFETY?
The way HOF are taken into account is the result of the obstacles encountered when
analysing events (incidents, near-misses, accidents), which were mainly, and sometimes
only, examined from a technical angle. In contemporary safety analyses, it now seems to be
taken for granted that the main vulnerabilities are related to HOF, rather as if, in the various
areas, we had reached the limit of the progress that could be made from a technical point of
view. Thus, any significant steps forward would now have to be made at the human and at
the organisational (or managerial) level. On this point, there would appear to be a fairly
broad consensus which allows the engineering world to consider any residual imperfections
in safety to be outside of their scope of application. This allows the world of human and
social sciences (HSS) to acquire greater legitimacy for their work in this area.

However, the scope of HOF has not been clearly set out. The hesitation between HOF and
OHF, which is still commonplace, is related to ongoing debates about the respective
importance of “humans” and “organisations” in factors that put safety at risk. Going beyond
the set-piece and spontaneous approaches around “human failings” and the progress made from
the notion of “human error”, the challenge is in fact to know just how far it is possible to scale
the ladder of causes in order to identify or allocate responsibilities. In other words, how can
we avoid limiting analysis to the behaviour of operators, or first-line management (as is still
often the case)? [1].

A number of disciplines have been drawn together to analyse HOF (ergonomics, psychology,
sociology of work, management sciences, sociology of organisations, sociology of
professions, etc.). Thus, knowledge capital and know-how exist, although it would still be
worthwhile questioning their constitution (such as, for example, the role of human and
organisational factors in the technical and scientific choices within companies?). Or, to put it
another way, is the way in which HOF are limited closely related to the disciplines that have
analysed them?

Nevertheless, HOF have acquired a status in the analysis of industrial safety, and companies
in charge of high-risk activities have been incited to examine this issue, design specific safety
actions and put in place the corresponding training. But this rather indisputable general

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 movement is facing a number of obstacles, partly due to the fact that HOF are an “intermittent”
priority within companies, according to circumstances and contexts. As a result, it is mainly
when serious incidents, accidents or catastrophes occur that the debate around these factors is
rekindled. Similarly, it is mainly in these circumstances that researchers, experts and actors
expressing their concerns within companies are able to underline the importance of HOF.

2) HOW TO MAKE HOF EXIST?

A first option is to try to make HOF a priority for safety. This is a difficult but not impossible
goal to reach given the increasing attention paid to the risk of accidents, notably major ones, and
the sensitivity of certain key decision makers about this subject. But this implies that those in
charge of HOF would undertake very deliberate actions with great consistency over time, while
associating themselves closely with the knowledge generators in this area. They would notably
be raising the profile of the structures they are leading high enough for them to be heard by
deciders. This option, which in many ways would appear justified, requires a lot of energy and
its success is heavily dependent on the circumstances.

Another more modest and more pragmatic option is based around the idea that HOF are unlikely
to be recognised as a priority by all decision makers anyway (other than the group of those who
were immediately convinced by them). In this approach, the strategy would focus less on preaching
their virtues and rather seek ways to allow them to become part of the ordinary daily lives of
companies. In other words, to keep these concerns “alive” through a number of activities, without
them being necessarily linked to any risks. The downside of this being, of course, that the question
of HOF becomes less visible and less specific.[2]

There is a debate around these two main options. The first and most obvious one is risky, in the
sense that it assumes that taking into account HOF means that there is a real programme, of both
knowledge and action, with true continuity over time. This has the merit of coherency and makes
it possible to envisage the drafting of a doctrine based on specific knowledge and actors able to
put them to the test in their activities. The second option is risky in the sense that it can lead to a
certain dispersal or dilution in HOF knowledge. However, it has the merit of, discreetly and
quietly, being able to penetrate all levels of the company, at various moments.

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This report discusses this difficulty in finding the right position. The position is an essential
question in order to determine how, today, industrial safety can be truly enriched by the learnings
from work on HOF. In some ways, this then leads us to reflect on the relationship between the
ordinary and the exceptional within companies managing high risk activities.

Incomplete Root Cause Analysis

No cognizance of the fact: Human contribution to safety is primarily positive:

• Operators detect and manage no. of situations

• Human activity corrects many errors.

• Human beings learn from experience.

Adopting Short cut:

Declaring Human Error as Root Cause of an event:

• Direct or apparent cause – People’s carelessness or poor safety attitudes (human error).

• Root cause - invariably a latent failure /error associated with Human and organizational factors.

If root cause is not identified and addressed- Recurrence Errors are consequences and not the
cause.

Safety result from the interaction of individuals with technology and with the organization so, all
the 03 factors which technical, human, organizational need to be addressed.

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 H F

Figure 1 Balanced attention

Organizational Factor
• Leadership

• Management Commitments: Vision, Mission, Core values

• Policies, Strategies, Plans, Procedures

• Decision making

• Setting Priorities

• Resource Management

• Work Environment

• Communication

• Culture

• Continuous improvements

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Errors can remain latent for very long time (Latent Errors).

People build up and develop organizations, and organizations influence the development of
people, the way in which they act and interact.

Therefore, it is important to understand what influences human activity (knowledge of

human and organizational factors).

Figure 2 HIERACHY

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 Human Factors
Human factors is defined as“ A discipline concerned with designing
machines, operations and, work environment so that they match human
capabilities, limitations, and needs”

Commissioning,
O&M

O
R
G
A
N
I
Z
A
T
I
O
N

Figure 3 ORGANIZATION & TECHNICAL SYSTEM

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 ELEMENT OF SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ADRESSING HOFS
Leadership: for establishing and maintain a healthy safety culture (vision,mission,resources,motivation)
Organisational Structure: clearly defined roles and responsibilities and lines of authority, communication
and regulation.
Training, Licensing & relicensing:
• NPP with multiple levels of DiD- Hazard opaque to the operator-Training most important
• “What is being done?” and ‘Why is it being done so?”
• Interaction with peers and supervisor
Rules, Practices & Procedures:
• Relevant & Practical.
• Procedures written in collaboration with plant personnel – less likely to be bypassed.
Reporting and Feedback:
• Free reporting of all operational observations and feedback at all levels.
• Objective treatment of all reporting and feedback
• Analysis of precursors
Root Cause Analysis: Root Cause Analysis: Focus on identifying latent conditions.
Emphasis on “what is reported”, and “what went wrong and why”
rather than “who has reported” and “who went wrong”?
Monitoring & Assessment:
 Higher presence of management in the field- identifying behaviour re-Inforcers.
 Internal audit, Regulatory oversight – focus on identifying latent errors.

Figure 4 FACTORS THAT AFFECT HUMAN BEHAVIOR

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 Regulator’s Role

• Ensure availability of robust safety management system at utilities.

• Competent regulators /experts for evaluation and monitoring.

• Verify effective implementation of a licensee’s safety management system with special

emphasis on capability of licensee’s root- cause analyses and corrective action programs.

Regulatory activities also have the potential for being counterproductive, especially if they appear to
shift the responsibility for safety from the operator to the regulator.

Concluding remarks

• Well developed Safety Management System (SMS) with balanced attention to HOT factors

and addressing essential role of management in coordination of “Rule –based Safety” and

“Managed Safety” is key for continual improvement in safety performance.

• Regulators have important role in ensuring establishment of proper SMS and its effective

implementation.

 Being independent observer, they are better placed to early identify onset of

signs of “fixation error”, “tunnel vision” “illusion control” and “optimism bias”

in the licensee's organization.

Figure 5 REGULATORS

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 REFERENCES
1) Claude gilbert, what is the place of human and organizational factors in safety. Grenoble-
France. Springer nature Switzerland AG. 2020.
2) K.J means, Safety leadership in human and organizational factors. Aberden,UK. B.journe
cle. 2020
3) Claude gilbert, what is the place of human and organizational factors in safety. Grenoble-
France. Springer nature Switzerland AG. 2020.

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