Measuring the impacts of human and organizational factors on human errors in the Dutch construction industry using structured expert judgement

Abstract

This study focuses on measuring the influence of critical Human and Organizational Factors (HOFs) on human error occurrence in structural design and construction tasks within the context of the Dutch construction industry. The primary research question addressed in this paper concerns the extent of HOFs’ contribution to human error occurrence. To answer this question, the Classical Model for Structured Expert Judgement (SEJ) is employed, enabling experts to provide their judgments on task Human Error Probability (HEP) influenced by different HOFs, which are subsequently aggregated mathematically. SEJ is chosen as a suitable approach due to the limited availability of applicable data in the construction sector. As a result, the impacts of HOFs are quantified as multipliers, representing the ratio between the observed or evaluated task HEP and its baseline value. These multipliers are then compared with corresponding multipliers from existing Human Reliability Analysis methods and studies. The findings reveal that fitness-for-duty, organizational characteristics and fragmentation exhibit the most pronounced negative effects, whereas complexity, attitude and fitness-for-duty demonstrate the most significant positive impacts on task performance. These results offer valuable insights that can be applied to enhance structural safety assurance practices.