It’s often the first explanation offered when catastrophic events occur and loss of life is experienced in major accidents across the globe, the dreaded “Human Error”. Recently, there have been many events in the public eye from medical errors at St. Luke’s to the Boeing Max 8 Air crashes that have brought this topic back to the forefront. In each case, human error was cited as a root cause. Although, the human is the weakest leak in any human-machine system and can always be listed as a cause, it is not the first link to break nor the true root cause of any of these incidents. Human Error is a symptom of deeper issues related to the organization (i.e. mgmt.), engineering/design decisions, and/or processes and procedures. Leveraging current event case studies, we will identify how human factors, as part of the safety paradigm, is often the most ignored but greatest risk mitigation strategy for companies.
