The prime purpose of a safety management system is to eliminate accidents and ill-health from the workplace. Accordingly, a prominent portion of safety management system is devoted to aspects on risk assessments and human behavior at work. All hazardous activities at the workplace are carefully assessed and the occupational risks are identified and profiled. Risk control systems developed by an organization basically comprises of risk profiles along with their associated control measures (protective, preventive and mitigatory). The traditional control measures to reduce risk levels are elimination, reduction, isolation, containment, PPE's and discipline. Of these, PPEs and discipline are those related to Human Factors. An analysis of recent industrial disasters like Deep-Water Horizon oil spill (2010), Buncefiled oil depot accident (2005), Texzas Oil refinery explosion (2005) indicate the root cause as unsafe acts carried out by the workplace personnel, which then got converted into unsafe conditions. If human factors are included to a sufficient degree in the risk control systems, then we must be doing enough to control the risks arising out of human failures. Thus if Human Reliability Assessment (HRA) is made part of the Risk Control Systems, then it will be possible to identify a set of process safety performance indicators, leading in nature, which will be adequate to provide  safe defence from the occurrence of adverse events or accidents. 

There is a whole lot of exercise going on by regulatory authorities to get actively involved with the industry to see that accidents at the work place do not happen. There are several legislations covering various industries belonging to aviation, oil & gas, marine, construction, hazardous chemicals where the risks levels of accidents are very high. Accordingly, there are associated Code of Practices as well, for the industries to adopt safe work procedures. Although the rate of major accidents has come down generally, human factor as a root cause or a contributory factor has increased. Disasters like those occurred in the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill (April 2010), BP Texas city refinery (March2005), Piper Alpha (July 1988), Clapham rail accident (Dec 1988), Bhopal gas tragedy (Dec 1984) all prove that human failure is still a root cause. HSE (UK), and similar regulatory authorities, therefore give more priority for human factor issues and encourage industries to adopt more proactive approaches in controlling human errors in maintenance and operations, by making the related risk evaluation (HRA) as part of the safety management system.

Human factor regarding safety is directly proportional to the behavioral approaches being followed at the workplace. Though the industry is being guided, advised and provided with regulatory inputs, there is still work to be carried out by individual companies and organizations to ensure that safe behavior at the workplace is being followed. The three main factors – Individual, Job and Organization – still plays a major role for shaping the behavioral approaches followed in the workplace.

Proactive approach to risk management is a necessity these days. Relying much on failure data or reactive monitoring will not help in abig way to improve performance, and is too dangerous because this can make way for improvements only after having adverse incidents and accidents.  PSPIs should be carefully chosen so as to provide feedback on critical syastems or/and  can provide an early warning on the deterioaration of controls.

The basic Health and Safety at Work Act,1974 mentions that risk assessments needs to be carried out to ensure that the existing controls are adequate and that the risk levels are at As-Low-as-Reasonably-Practical (ALARP). The Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations, 1999 require that the protective and preventive measures are following a POCMR regime. This means that RCS – monitored and reviewed periodically to ensure the effectivenss of control – to see if there are any changes and that the existing controls are adequate.

Essentially this requires that the RCS shall comprise of some process safety performance indicators, leading and lagging. Leading indicators will serve as early alarm systems, exposing the defects, deficiencies, weaknesses and shortcomings, gaps in the existing controls.