Senior Human Factors Specialist, rail safety

How did you find out about ergonomics?
When I was in my final year at Sheffield University, studying biology, I wasn’t sure what career path I wanted to follow. I tried some teaching work experience but wasn’t convinced it was the right job for me. In my career researching I completed an online survey which provided suggestions for which occupations would be suited to me. One of the suggested occupations was ergonomics, and to be honest, I didn’t know what it was at the time! However, I started to do some more research into it and discovered that there were ergonomists working at the Health and Safety Laboratories (HSL) just over the road in Sheffield. I arranged to go and talk with an ergonomist there and things snowballed. I applied for the Masters degree at Loughborough and was accepted.

Why a career in ergonomics?
As soon as I started the Masters at Loughborough I knew that ergonomics was the subject and career for me, I only wished that I’d stumbled across it earlier. Throughout school and university I was a bit of a scientist and ergonomics had lots of science in it but its application was in the real world. I could therefore see straight away that ergonomics was something important and worth doing. Towards the end of my year at Loughborough I started applying for jobs, one of which was for an ergonomist at HSL! I went for the interview and was offered the job. After completing my Masters I had a week holiday in Greece and then started work at HSL straight after.

What’s been the most interesting project you’ve worked on?
After two enjoyable years working for HSL I was offered a job as a Human Factors Specialist with RSSB, based in London. RSSB is the Rail Safety and Standards Board and I’ve been there since October 2006. I would say that the most interesting, and indeed most challenging project, is the project which was handed to me on day one and which is in its final stages at the moment. The project was to redesign and test the user interface for a train safety system in the driver’s cab, so we had responsibility for ensuring that driver’s could use the train safety system flawlessly! The project involved applying knowledge about interface design and running a trial in train simulators. The challenge has been to implement the changes emerging from the project into the Railway Group Standards in terms of building consensus in the industry to make any changes and dealing with technical limitations.

What do you do on a typical day?
My job is mainly office-based so typically I would make my way to our office in Angel. After dealing with any email queries I start work on any projects that I have on the go. These projects tend to fit into two categories. The first is where I undertake the technical work myself, and the second is where I review the work of other specialists and provide comments and technical guidance. It is very rare that I have a day free of meetings so usually I have project meetings to attend. Aside from project work I also have managerial tasks such as meeting with our placement student to discuss her projects.

What do you find most satisfying about your work?
Knowing that the work that I do either improves a person’s experience of their job or makes certain safety-critical tasks less error prone.