Beyond violations: Human factors in maintenance failures

Human factors are recognised as influencing the performance of workgroups in industrial operations. Surveys and interventions in high-risk industries, notably commercial aviation and power generation, have highlighted the practical implications of a focus on errors and violations in the workplace. The results have led to a marked improvement in the reliability and safety of operations in these industries. Lower risk industries such as the resource sector have been slower to develop a human factors approach to the reliability of their operations. This is partly because errors and violations may carry a lower risk, and partly because of a deep-seated focus on the technical causes of failure. As a result, less research has been done to directly link workplace factors with reliability failures. Existing literature implicates the principal human factors that may be associated with unreliable maintenance work in resource industry operations. This provides the basis for further studies designed to generate data supporting a link between specific human factors and maintenance outcomes.