Human Factors in Maintenance Failures

Structured interviews (N=38) were conducted with maintainers in a petroleum company who were asked to discuss a maintenance failure with which they were familiar. The interview structure was based on the Human Factor Investigation Tool- HFIT (Gordon, 2001) which in turn was based on the Model of Human Malfunction (Rasmussen, 1982). HFIT proved to be a useful instrument for identifying the pattern of human factors that recurred most frequently in maintenance-related failures. Of the 27 human factors identified, the three most frequent were found to be Assumptions (79 % of cases), Design & Maintenance (71%) and Communication (66%). Of equal interest, were the factors that were infrequently mentioned such as Procedure Violations, Supervision, and Work Quality