Systematic integration of human factors in the specification of requirements for new railway technologies

Engineering design processes are necessary to attain the requisite standards of integrity for high-assurance safety-related systems. Additionally, human factors design initiatives can provide critical insights that parameterise their development. Unfortunately, the popular perception of human factors as a “forced marriage” between engineering and psychology often provokes views where the ‘human factor’ is perceived as a threat to systems design. Some popular performance-based standards for developing safety-related systems advocate identifying and managing human factors throughout the system lifecycle. However, they also have a tendency to fall short in their guidance on the application of human factors methods and tools, let alone how the outputs generated can be integrated in to various stages of the design process. This case study describes a project that converged engineering with human factors to develop a safety argument for new low-cost railway level crossing technology for system-wide implementation in Australia. The paper enjoins the perspectives of a software engineer and cognitive psychologist and their involvement in the project over two years of collaborative work to develop a safety argument for low-cost level crossing technology. Safety and reliability requirements were informed by applying human factors analytical tools that supported the evaluation and quantification of human reliability where users interfaced with the technology. The project team was confronted with significant challenges in cross-disciplinary engagement, particularly with the complexities of dealing with incongruences in disciplinary language. They were also encouraged to think ‘outside the box’ as to how users of a system interpreted system states and ehaviour. Importantly, some of these states, while considered safe within the boundary of the constituent systems that implemented safety-related functions, could actually lead the users to engage in deviant behaviour. Psychology explained how user compliance could be eroded to levels that effectively undermined levels of risk reduction afforded by systems. Linking the engineering and psychology disciplines intuitively, overall safety performance was improved by introducing technical requirements and making design decisions that minimized the system states and behaviours that led to user deviancy. As a commentary on the utility of transdisciplinary collaboration for technical specification, the processes used to bridge the two disciplines are conceptualised in a graphical model.

Specification & design of safety technologies for complex socio-technical systems : low-cost level crossings case study

The introduction of safety technologies into complex socio-technical systems requires an integrated and holistic approach to HF and engineering, considering the effects of failures not only within system boundaries, but also at the interfaces with other systems and humans. Level crossing warning devices are examples of such systems where technically safe states within the system boundary can influence road user performance, giving rise to other hazards that degrade safety of the system. Chris will discuss the challenges that have been encountered to date in developing a safety argument in support of low-cost level crossing warning devices. The design and failure modes of level crossing warning devices are known to have a significant influence on road user performance; however, quantifying this effect is one of the ongoing challenges in determining appropriate reliability and availability targets for low-cost level crossing warning devices.

Open Specification for BIM : Sydney Opera House Case Study

Executive Summary The objective of this report was to use the Sydney Opera House as a case study of the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM). The Sydney opera House is a complex, large building with very irregular building configuration, that makes it a challenging test. A number of key concerns are evident at SOH: • the building structure is complex, and building service systems - already the major cost of ongoing maintenance - are undergoing technology change, with new computer based services becoming increasingly important. • the current “documentation” of the facility is comprised of several independent systems, some overlapping and is inadequate to service current and future services required • the building has reached a milestone age in terms of the condition and maintainability of key public areas and service systems, functionality of spaces and longer term strategic management. • many business functions such as space or event management require up-to-date information of the facility that are currently inadequately delivered, expensive and time consuming to update and deliver to customers. • major building upgrades are being planned that will put considerable strain on existing Facilities Portfolio services, and their capacity to manage them effectively While some of these concerns are unique to the House, many will be common to larger commercial and institutional portfolios. The work described here supported a complementary task which sought to identify if a building information model – an integrated building database – could be created, that would support asset & facility management functions (see Sydney Opera House – FM Exemplar Project, Report Number: 2005-001-C-4 Building Information Modelling for FM at Sydney Opera House), a business strategy that has been well demonstrated. The development of the BIMSS - Open Specification for BIM has been surprisingly straightforward. The lack of technical difficulties in converting the House’s existing conventions and standards to the new model based environment can be related to three key factors: • SOH Facilities Portfolio – the internal group responsible for asset and facility management - have already well established building and documentation policies in place. The setting and adherence to well thought out operational standards has been based on the need to create an environment that is understood by all users and that addresses the major business needs of the House. • The second factor is the nature of the IFC Model Specification used to define the BIM protocol. The IFC standard is based on building practice and nomenclature, widely used in the construction industries across the globe. For example the nomenclature of building parts – eg ifcWall, corresponds to our normal terminology, but extends the traditional drawing environment currently used for design and documentation. This demonstrates that the international IFC model accurately represents local practice for building data representation and management. • a BIM environment sets up opportunities for innovative processes that can exploit the rich data in the model and improve services and functions for the House: for example several high-level processes have been identified that could benefit from standardized Building Information Models such as maintenance processes using engineering data, business processes using scheduling, venue access, security data and benchmarking processes using building performance data. The new technology matches business needs for current and new services. The adoption of IFC compliant applications opens the way forward for shared building model collaboration and new processes, a significant new focus of the BIM standards. In summary, SOH current building standards have been successfully drafted for a BIM environment and are confidently expected to be fully developed when BIM is adopted operationally by SOH. These BIM standards and their application to the Opera House are intended as a template for other organisations to adopt for the own procurement and facility management activities. Appendices provide an overview of the IFC Integrated Object Model and an understanding IFC Model Data.

Bridging technical and HCI research : creating usable ubiquitous computing

This paper describes methods used to support collaboration and communication between practitioners, designers and engineers when designing ubiquitous computing systems. We tested methods such as “Wizard of Oz” and design games in a real domain, the dental surgery, in an attempt to create a system that is: affordable; minimally disruptive of the natural flow of work; and improves human-computer interaction. In doing so we found that such activities allowed the practitioners to be on a ‘level playing ground’ with designers and engineers. The findings we present suggest that dentists are willing to engage in detailed exploration and constructive critique of technical design possibilities if the design ideas and prototypes are presented in the context of their work practice and are of a resolution and relevance that allow them to jointly explore and question with the design time. This paper is an extension of a short paper submitted to the Participatory Design Conference, 2004.

Technical support and professional development : using remote desktops to address bottlenecks in music technology

This paper presents research findings about the use of remote desktop applications to teach music sequencing software. It highlights the successes, shortcomings and interactive issues encountered during a pilot project with a theoretical focus on a specific interactive bottleneck. The paper proposes a new delivery and partnership model to widen this bottleneck, which currently hinders interactions between the technical support, education and professional development communities in music technology.

Building Information Modelling for FM at Sydney Opera House

“SOH see significant benefit in digitising its drawings and operation and maintenance manuals. Since SOH do not currently have digital models of the Opera House structure or other components, there is an opportunity for this national case study to promote the application of Digital Facility Modelling using standardized Building Information Models (BIM)”. The digital modelling element of this project examined the potential of building information models for Facility Management focusing on the following areas: • The re-usability of building information for FM purposes • BIM as an Integrated information model for facility management • Extendibility of the BIM to cope with business specific requirements • Commercial facility management software using standardised building information models • The ability to add (organisation specific) intelligence to the model • A roadmap for SOH to adopt BIM for FM The project has established that BIM – building information modelling - is an appropriate and potentially beneficial technology for the storage of integrated building, maintenance and management data for SOH. Based on the attributes of a BIM, several advantages can be envisioned: consistency in the data, intelligence in the model, multiple representations, source of information for intelligent programs and intelligent queries. The IFC – open building exchange standard – specification provides comprehensive support for asset and facility management functions, and offers new management, collaboration and procurement relationships based on sharing of intelligent building data. The major advantages of using an open standard are: information can be read and manipulated by any compliant software, reduced user “lock in” to proprietary solutions, third party software can be the “best of breed” to suit the process and scope at hand, standardised BIM solutions consider the wider implications of information exchange outside the scope of any particular vendor, information can be archived as ASCII files for archival purposes, and data quality can be enhanced as the now single source of users’ information has improved accuracy, correctness, currency, completeness and relevance. SOH current building standards have been successfully drafted for a BIM environment and are confidently expected to be fully developed when BIM is adopted operationally by SOH. There have been remarkably few technical difficulties in converting the House’s existing conventions and standards to the new model based environment. This demonstrates that the IFC model represents world practice for building data representation and management (see Sydney Opera House – FM Exemplar Project Report Number 2005-001-C-3, Open Specification for BIM: Sydney Opera House Case Study). Availability of FM applications based on BIM is in its infancy but focussed systems are already in operation internationally and show excellent prospects for implementation systems at SOH. In addition to the generic benefits of standardised BIM described above, the following FM specific advantages can be expected from this new integrated facilities management environment: faster and more effective processes, controlled whole life costs and environmental data, better customer service, common operational picture for current and strategic planning, visual decision-making and a total ownership cost model. Tests with partial BIM data – provided by several of SOH’s current consultants – show that the creation of a SOH complete model is realistic, but subject to resolution of compliance and detailed functional support by participating software applications. The showcase has demonstrated successfully that IFC based exchange is possible with several common BIM based applications through the creation of a new partial model of the building. Data exchanged has been geometrically accurate (the SOH building structure represents some of the most complex building elements) and supports rich information describing the types of objects, with their properties and relationships.