Speakers Names:
Dr Jim Nixon and Fiona Johnson
Job title:
HM Specialist Inspector (Human Factors Engineering)
Organisation:
Health and Safety Executive
Biography:
Dr Jim Nixon is an experienced Human Factors Engineering professional and Chartered Psychologist serving as a Specialist Inspector at the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). He brings an academic foundation to his regulatory work, having held the position of Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at Cranfield University, where he contributed to research and teaching on human factors in safety‑critical systems.
His industry experience spans high‑profile organisations, including senior roles as Principal Human Factors Engineer at BAE Systems and Human Factors Specialist at NATS. In addition to his academic qualifications, Jim holds a Diploma in Regulatory Occupational Health and Safety, enhancing his technical expertise with a solid understanding of regulatory frameworks and practice.
Across his career, Jim has remained committed to the central principle that safety‑critical systems perform effectively only when they are designed around real people doing real work in real operational environments. This human‑centred perspective continues to guide his contributions to industry, academia, and regulation.
Biography:
Fiona is a Chartered Human Factors Specialist and a qualified engineer. During her electrical, control & instrumentation engineering career with several major operators, she delivered control system and control room projects, conducted functional safety assessments, and investigated incidents. Recognising that the need to account for human performance was an often critical gap in the design of complex hazardous systems, Fiona completed a Master’s in Ergonomics to understand how to design systems to also include operator needs within the equipment and process designs to deliver effective functional safety.
Before joining the Health and Safety Executive, Fiona worked as a Human Factors Consultant, delivering projects spanning control room and human–machine interface evaluations, alarm management strategies, workload assessments, and safety-critical task analysis. Now an HM Specialist Inspector in Human Factors, she applies this unique blend of engineering and human factors expertise to improve safety and operational performance across high hazard industries within Great Britain. With a unique blend of engineering and human factors expertise, she brings practical insight into improving safety and operational performance in complex systems.
Presentation abstract/summary:
Effective alarm management in safety‑critical environments relies as much on effective human performance as on technical design. As human factors specialist regulators, typically working with COMAH establishments, we draw on our delivery guide to evaluate how organisations design, operate, and continually improve their alarm systems.
As part of the alarm management criteria in the human factors delivery guide (Topic 2.2), a user‑centred approach is essential, particularly where alarms are claimed as control measures and timely operator response comprises a critical safety task. Inspections often show challenges such as misperception of alarm meaning, uncertainty about required actions or inadequate prioritisation. Establishments vary in how they demonstrate that operators can detect, interpret, and act on alarms under real operational conditions, yet this demonstration is fundamental to validating barrier performance.
Alarm metrics can support both dutyholders and regulators by providing insight into alarm system health and performance, but taken alone do not always fully reflect operator experience of the work system. Isolated reliance on metrics may conceal actual workload or context that are crucial for understanding true operational capacity and safety. Meaningful user input is necessary to develop and interpret metrics and achieve a balanced view of performance, consistent with wider considerations of human capacity.
Looking forward, emerging AI‑enabled tools offer potential opportunities for improving alarm management, from pattern detection to intelligent prioritisation. However, these technologies will still require careful human‑centred design and regulatory scrutiny to ensure they support, rather than compromise, safe and effective operator performance.