As of the closing of this issue, we are immersed in the greatest health crisis in recent history. An unprecedented event that is forcing us to adapt, change how we work and bring out the best in ourselves. I want to express my solidarity and appreciation to everyone with the firm conviction that together, we will overcome it.

Nevertheless, our dedication and commitment to the improvement of mobility and safety of infrastructure, spurs us on to continue carrying out our activity. One example of this is the comprehensive renovation of the Recoletos tunnel, which traverses Madrid from north to south and is a key element in improving the comfort and safety of this infrastructure, which carries the most rail traffic of the entire Spanish network. Designed and managed by Ineco on behalf of Adif, our technicians have played a crucial role in tackling one of the most important railway mobility projects in little more than five months, given that several commuter lines run through this tunnel, serving more than 250 million passengers a year.

Knowledge and input for improving urban mobility and promoting its sustainable development were combined at the recent World Urban Forum in Abu Dhabi. With the objective of facing the future with more sustainable and inclusive transportation, the companies of the Group of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda presented their innovative projects at this international meeting convened by UN-Habitat.

Our dedication to improving the safety of transport and mobility has led us to participate in important studies and projects with major social benefits

Experience in the modernisation of railway lines, and in particular in the development and deployment of the ERTMS system, together with more than 14 years of collaboration in European innovation projects, led to Ineco’s participation in ERSAT GGC, an ambitious project financed by the European Satellite Navigation Agency which will make it possible to implement satellite technology in the European rail traffic management system ERTMS by means of virtual balises.

This same dedication to innovation to improve air and land safety is also behind the efforts by our experts to develop the ‘Factor Humano’ methodology, which has received several different awards, including the Canso ‘Global Safety Achievement Award 2019’.

Ineco’s international activity also prompted its involvement in the supervision of new trains for Quito’s first metro, and in the aeronautical field, to the design of the Master Plans for 12 airports of the Pacific Airport Group, a client to whom we are grateful for the comments made by its Network and Regulated Business Director, Jose Ángel Martínez.

As for Spain, in this issue we cover two road projects recently opened by the Ministry of Transport, which will reduce travel times and increase safety levels: the complex stretch of the A-23 highway as it passes through the Monrepós mountain pass, and the new Gaznata bridge over the Burguillo reservoir in Ávila.

Lastly, we highlight the launch of Ineco’s new Equality Plan, which includes important initiatives aimed at achieving real and effective equality, and which will have a Monitoring Committee to measure its degree of implementation and impact.

Human error is the principal causal factor in approximately 80% of all recorded accidents, regardless of the industry involved. But despite the current trend towards automation, human beings are still the key element of all systems and an intrinsic part of their entire life cycle, hence the vital importance of studying the influence of human behaviour on safety. Regulations in some countries already demand analysis of the human factor in addition to conventional safety assessments.

However, in those cases where risk analysis does take the human factor into account, a market deficiency in regard to methods for performing more in-depth analysis means that it generally only does so on a superficial level. Under this premise, there is a definite need for safety studies that take a broader, more comprehensive view of the human factor, or in other words, the human interaction with systems and how it is influenced by different environmental elements, to come up with effective accident prevention strategies.

One of the reasons the human factor is typically absent from system studies is a lack of scientific knowledge regarding the subject, and also how to include it in risk assessments and safety studies. However, leading national and international organisations now demand increasingly safe and reliable systems, which means that taking the human factor into consideration when designing, producing, operating and maintaining a system has never been more important.

Despite the current trend towards automation, human beings are still the key element of all systems and an intrinsic part of their entire life cycle

Ineco’s project

Over the course of two years, the Ineco innovation project has been working to develop a more thorough and transparent method for handling the human element in safety analyses, which, in turn, will enable us to design systems that are more human friendly. The project analysed proven human-factor methodologies and techniques not generally applied to safety studies and managed to extract, simplify and integrate them into risk assessment processes, therefore, making them universally applicable to any sector of the transport industry. The method was selected as the winner of Ineco’s 2019 Innova Awards and the 2019 CANSO Global Safety Achievement Award.

The company has spent years trying to gain a better understanding of how to account for the human factor in safety. Some of the lines of action include the innovation project, coordination between the rail and air navigation sectors, collaboration with universities such as Polytechnic University of Madrid and the University of Málaga, training in human factors and participation in different forums and conferences.

The project began with an exhaustive analysis of human-factor methodologies and science, which were used to begin to extract different tools and techniques and apply them to case studies, while simultaneously developing other methodologies of their own. Given that safety assessments typically concentrate on identifying threats to mitigate their risks, this time, the project team focused on identifying the human mistake or error.

By doing so, they were able to design a process that included an adapted HRA (Human Reliability Assessment), based on the HEART method(Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique). The process can be run in conjunction with safety studies and can be tailored to each phase in an integrated and traceable manner. The result is that we now have a generic method for including the human factor in risk assessments.

The main goal of the project was to integrate accepted human-factor techniques into a standard safety study in a way that safety technicians will find easy to apply and, in doing so, to develop new techniques, like FARHRA. In addition, the method utilises and customises different tools such as HAZOP sessions, interviews and targeted surveys or questionnaires, to capitalise on expert knowledge, which is the primary source of information in this type of analysis. The next step now is to implement the knowledge and experience in this area in safety studies for aviation, railways or other sectors in order to verify its consistency and internal and external reliability.

The final results will represent an improvement in the design process of systems with a specific requirement for enhanced human output, increasing safety and adding value and recognition to the human role.