Human Performance Training and Job Aids for Nuclear Materials Applications William S. Brown Brookhaven National Laboratory November 25, 2007

Background: Need to Provide a Human Performance Perspective  Staff need to understand risk-important human failures in the context of activities employing nuclear material  Knowledge of human performance considerations varies; gained principally by experience  Need to augment and ‘level’ the human performance expertise  The resources provided should be specific to particular uses, yet general enough to support dealing with new technologies

Objectives in Developing the Human Performance Perspective  The resources should support different aims, e.g.: prospective - technical basis for judgments in novel circumstances - anticipate what’s important short of harm being done retrospective - event investigations - evaluation of corrective actions  Human performance information must be in a readily usable form (by staff without extensive experience)  Develop first for a particular medical modality proof of concept expand to other modalities and eventually to industrial uses

Format/Features of ‘Job Aids’?  Interviews and discussions with representative prospective users  Review of reported events that prospective users deal with  Various alternative formats suggested brief synopses of relevant human performance topics discussion of events from human performance perspective annotation of event reports decomposition of tasks with respect to human errors a series of questions that lead user to relevant issues

Job Aids and Knowledge Sources Human Performance Knowledge One Pagers Prompts Error Narratives Task Breakdowns Error Discussions Nuclear Material Uses Information/Analyses

Implementation of Job Aids  Multiple purposes various entry points flexible paths through the content  Scope to be expanded adding uses beyond the test bed adding content as it becomes available  Requirements imply… search, indexing hypertext  Use of HATs (Help Authoring Tools ) ease of creating content familiarity with interaction style

Contents of Training  Initial approach general review of human performance concepts context-specific information on relevant topics - automation - checking - staffing contents and features of the job aid  Feedback “How do we go from where we are to where we want to be?” “What do we do differently?” “Like to see case studies” topic presentation too detailed, lengthy?

Contents of Training (Take 2)  Use the job aid to provide information on specific human performance topics reference material number of topics can increase as coverage expands  Add examples and practical exercises to demonstrate what is to be done differently  Use training to convey a preferred way of thinking about human performance and the causes of events a few ‘understandings’ - not the typical approach the ‘new view’ of human error; resilience engineering

Lessons for HPI Implementation  Establish resources and means to access them don’t try to train everybody on everything put things where people can get to them  Train understandings not details details may not be used regularly, likely to be forgotten  Emphasize practical differences identify specific activities where HPI will make a difference - work planning, work observations, event analysis show what exactly you want people to do differently  Concentrate on things done more often more effective in changing the ‘culture’ upstream activities make more of a difference