2011 Q9 Human Factors in a Control Centre

[dorothy.pipet]

Comments please

[AdrianM]

Comments please

Hi Dorothy,

I've attempted the same question and attached for info and comment.

It looks like we broadly answered the question in the same manner. I did add a 3rd 'type' of workload to the initial question: Infrequent/Sporadic workload along with High and Low workloads.

I liked your inclusion of automatic functions and the impact to de-skill operators (What happens when this automatic function fails, will the operator remember the manual procedure?! This ties in with infrequent workload, maybe?)

I think its worth specifically mentioning Human Factors (HF) studies within the answer, even though it's very clear in your answer that you've identified this as a major measure in reducing probability or human error during design.

Regards,
Adrian

[PJW]

Comments please

Hi Dorothy,

I've attempted the same question and attached for info and comment.

It looks like we broadly answered the question in the same manner. I did add a 3rd 'type' of workload to the initial question: Infrequent/Sporadic workload along with High and Low workloads.

I liked your inclusion of automatic functions and the impact to de-skill operators (What happens when this automatic function fails, will the operator remember the manual procedure?! This ties in with infrequent workload, maybe?)

I think its worth specifically mentioning Human Factors (HF) studies within the answer, even though it's very clear in your answer that you've identified this as a major measure in reducing probability or human error during design.

Regards,
Adrian

Perhaps what I should explain to people is that Dorothy and I currently work for the same company, albeit at different sites and that we occasionally meet up and at other times have remote sessions with each other; she tends to place her attempts on the Forum so that we both have access from work or home etc. and they don't get lost in the work email inbox.  Hence the quantity of unanswered post may look as if I have been ignoring her, but that is not the case.   A side benefit of her being prepared to share in this way is that others can see and the hope was, as indeed has happened in this case, that others would comment and get involved.

Whereas I have privately made some suggestions for improvement in her attempts at various questions, there is very little "wrong" in any of them and I think that almost all fall into the range of solid passes, some probably into the Credit area and very few dipping into the borderline and Near Miss area.  Hence overall they represent a sizeable body of work that represents the sort of level that students should be aiming for, so if working for this module without other means of getting assistance these attempts then referring to these attempts would actually a good reference for you- they may not be perfect but if you do as well as this (and they are generally done under approximate exam conditions) then you should be reasonably confident about the exam.

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Hence I'll now make a few comments on Adrian's attempt.

The first half page seem about the right level of detail for the first 5 mark section and the tabular presentation makes clear that it is not just excess workload that can be the problem.
One point to note is that the two margins ought, according to examination information, be left clear for the examiners to utilise for their marks.  Whether they actually do use both I do wonder (perhaps an anachronism now that photocopiers and scanners and email etc exist!) but it is brave candidate who decides to violate the instruction.
You are certainly also told NOT to go into the margin and indeed looking at this picture alignement etc one can definitely see that there is the chance of losing text by so doing and examiners cannot award marks for what they can't see and read.
SOLUTION: Use the A3 sized answer paper- there are marks along the horizontal and vertical edges that can speedily be ruled across to make a wide variety of tables for either orientation.
Moral- Spend those few seconds thinking re how to present your answer before jumping in; I suspect that the whole idea of an "Example" column was an after thought.

Content was fine.  It was sensible to put a # note to expand what would not fit in the relevant box in the table since extra detail etc.;  actually it would have been a good idea when using a phrase such as "Engineering Hours" which is a term used on London Underground which denotes that portion of the operating day when no train service is  operated and the "mode" swaps from being an operating railway to a railway under maintenance.  This concept does not exist on Network Rail; the railway is always theoretically open to traffic apart from when there is a specifically pre-planned Engineering Possession.  Ironically there are bits of NR that are nowadays "practically always" under a regular possession pattern, yet there are Underground lines that are intended to be operated 24 hours a day, but old terms tend to stay in use.  The key issue is that the term is "railway specific" and the candidate needs to recognise that an examiner from another background may not get the full significance, so a # ref with just a brief hint (NOT the detailed explanation above!) is probably worth it to avoid the risk of not getting the credit expected.

The third row in the table is perhaps not strictly "workload" but I think was valuable to include- perhaps wording the first column to have include the word "tasks" would have made more obvious that when a particular activity is only performed rarely within what is otherwise a reasonable workload then the level of familiarity with that task is such that the person is likely to be more prone to making errors associated with it.

A full page for the next 10 mark section is also about right level of content although a little on the light side; it was good to present in the manner undertaken but by spreading out in this way obviously means less content per page and I would have expected some more on the next.  Again I think I'd have used A3 paper (answer here has spilled below bottom margin)  then there would have been plenty of space.  Easy also to have moved onto part 3 on a fresh eet and should at the end of that section you'd have found a few minutes left, very easy to go back to sheet 2 and add a bit more onto the basic answer previously done.
No significant comments on content other than being a bit light; there are 6 factors here each well worth a mark, but rarely enough to encourage me to award 2 marks. OK I might award 1.5 for several of them and 6 x 1.5 = 9, but I think another couple of factors would have been a good idea.  Temperature, air conditioning etc. may be one; an area to go away from the control centre for rest breaks allows relaxation and somewhere for people to talk about issues that are not real-time operational subjects would be things that I would have included for example.

The last section is about 1.5 pages of that same style of presentation and thus what I think is appropriate length for a chance of the last 10 marks.  The greater content in the various section is much more likely to have enough for 2 marks in at least some cases so one can see that 6 sections do have a decent claim on getting those 10 marks.
It was good to relate the numbers to the previous section; if you ended up with only the time to have done the first 6 and there were 8 parts in the previous section, that does not give a problem since the question did not explicitly require- it was the candidates choice  and if anything would only encourage the examiner to make the assumption that the person could have gone on in similar vein, but had actually given a wide enough answer already and had spent their 25 writing minutes well and had fulfilled the requirements explicitly specified in the question.
I think this would probably have been a Credit answer, particularly if had availed itself of the luxury of presentation on A3 sheets rather than slightly infringe some examination rules and perhaps sometimes constrain itself due to the surface area of the writing paper!