Why Choose this Training Course

Human Factors is recognized as a key topic for addressing safety in the oil, gas, onshore chemical plants, pharmaceutical manufacturing and power generation sectors.

What is Safety Critical Task Analysis (SCTA)?

Task Analysis refers to the study of what actions and mental processes a person needs to perform to achieve a goal (Kirwan and Ainsworth). It often breaks down tasks into smaller subtasks to describe how they are done.

Safety Critical Task Analysis (SCTA), on the other hand, focuses on tasks that are critical to preventing major accidents. These are tasks where human factors can contribute to, cause, or fail to mitigate a major accident.

Definition of a Safety Critical Task (SCT):

An SCT is any task where human error could:

• Cause or contribute to a major accident
• Fail to prevent or mitigate one

SCTs occur in various operational contexts, such as:

• Operational tasks: e.g., loading liquid petroleum gas (LPG), sampling hazardous substances, or isolating piping/equipment.
• Prevention and detection: e.g., testing safety systems or overriding safety functions.
• Control and mitigation: e.g., testing pressure safety valves or firewater pumps.
• Emergency response: e.g., deploying firefighting equipment or launching lifeboats.

A “major accident” refers to an event like a large emission, fire, or explosion that poses serious risks to health or the environment, as defined by the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) Regulations.

SCTA Process

1. Identify Safety Critical Tasks: Determine which tasks are critical to safety.
2. Prioritize SCTs for Analysis: Decide which tasks need deeper analysis.
3. Analyze Human Actions: Study which human actions or inactions could lead to failure.
4. Install Layers of Protection: Develop safeguards to reduce human error or its consequences.

SCTA is often conducted during project design or safety updates, but it’s increasingly embedded into operations as an ongoing activity, especially when tasks and equipment change.

Importance of Embedding SCTA in Operations

For large-scale operations, getting specialist input at every site may not be practical. Therefore, companies are building SCTA knowledge within their workforce, especially at the management and supervisory levels. This approach improves:

• Risk assessment quality
• Incident investigations
• Improvement suggestions

SCTA also supports better maintenance and safety culture by giving personnel a structured way to examine their procedures. This can reveal key barriers to safety and the steps necessary to protect them.

Performance Influencing Factors (PIFs)

A key element of SCTA is understanding PIFs. These factors can either strengthen or degrade safety barriers. Personnel who are familiar with these factors can:

• Recognize when safeguards are failing
• Understand how human performance impacts safety

Benefits of SCTA

A well-executed SCTA program can lead to:

• Improved major accident hazard (MAH) safety performance
• Fewer environmental incidents
• Reduced production downtime
• Improved quality
• Cost reduction in major projects

In summary, SCTA is a powerful tool for analyzing human factors in safety-critical tasks, helping to prevent major accidents and improve safety performance across industries.

Who Should Attend

• Plant Managers
• Process Safety specialists
• Process plant designers
• Supervisors
• Senior process operators
• Procedures and training developers

Key Learning Objectives

• Understand Human Factors and SCTA
• Understand the different types of human error that need to be addressed within process safety
• Be able to use techniques such as Hierarchical Task Analysis, Human Failure and Consequence analyses, and Performance Influencing Factors evaluations  for simple tasks
• Be able to develop risk-informed procedures and competency standards based on the results of the SCTA work
• Start to think about developing policies and a programme of work using SCTA to address human factors in process safety, with particular emphasis on satisfying regulatory requirements such as COMAH

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