Insights
Analysis on the human element in mission-critical work.
Fatigue, heat, workload and work system design, written for the people accountable for frontline performance.
Series · 6 articles ·
Engineered to Fail
Six articles testing one claim each from the book of the same name, on how Defence capability development treats the human. Every part opens on a land case and uses an air or maritime case as proof.
- Part 1 Defence Safety Cases and the Human Operator: When Safe, Provided Becomes a Condition of Use
- Part 2 Known Human Limits in Capability Programmes: Why the Action Comes From Below
- Part 3 Human Machine Interface Failure in Defence: What Reverting to Old Equipment Tells You
- Part 4 Crewing Feasibility in Capability Planning: Sized in Platforms, Left to Trend Lines
- Part 5 Accident Investigation and Design Failure: How the Frame Decides the Finding
- Part 6 A Land Systems Safety Regulator: What the Nimrod Loss Taught the Air Domain
Series · 5 articles ·
The Human Cost of Getting It Wrong
Five articles on how capability programmes fail on the human side, and what each failure costs in capability rather than welfare.
- Issue 1 Noise and Vibration in Military Vehicles: When Health Hazards Become Capability Failures
- Issue 2 Crew Compartment Air Quality: The Survivability System Capability Programmes Forget
- Issue 3 Anthropometrics in Military Equipment Design: Built for a Body That Does Not Exist
- Issue 4 Crew Endurance and Crewing Models: The Design Constraint Programmes Assume Away
- Issue 5 HSI Governance and Safety Culture: When Expertise Has No Authority to Stop the Line
Series · 3 articles ·
Fighting Fire in the Wrong Season
Three articles on the physiology of deploying Australian crews into a northern hemisphere fire season: heat acclimatisation, the body clock, and fitness for duty in the field.
- Part 1 Firefighter Heat Acclimatisation: Why Crews Leaving an Australian Winter Are at Risk on a Northern Fireground
- Part 2 Time Zone Shifts and Firefighter Fatigue: The Body Clock Problem Deployment Planning Ignores
- Part 3 Firefighter Fatigue Management in the Field: How Do You Know Your People Are Still Fit to Work?
Individual articles
-
Exertional Heat Stroke in Elite Sport: The Risk Your Heat Policy Does Not Cover
Three young forwards have now collapsed at training and died in five and a half years. Exertional heat stroke is one of the most predictable conditions in sport, and almost all of the prevention happens in the diary, the measurement and the session plan.