Overview
A practical Human Factors Pathway for defence professionals, built with sector specialists to improve mission safety, operational effectiveness and through-life performance. It focuses on how people interact with equipment, environments and command systems under real operational constraints.
Key topics
- Introduction to HF in defence: Level 1 foundations - how HF improves mission readiness, survivability and system reliability across land, sea, air, space and cyber.
- Human-centred design & integration: Embed HF through requirements, concepts, prototyping, trials and acceptance so systems, workspaces and interfaces fit users and context.
- Cognitive ergonomics: Attention, workload, decision-making under time pressure, and situational awareness in control rooms, cockpits and command centres.
- Physical ergonomics: Seating, reach, posture and layout for vehicles, ships, aircraft and dismounted roles to reduce strain and errors.
- Human–machine teaming & autonomy: Roles, handovers and appropriate trust in automation, AI decision aids, drones and remote systems.
- Teamwork, communications & stakeholder engagement: Better brief/debrief, handovers and cross-unit/coalition working; involve operators, maintainers, engineers, trainers and procurement to build buy-in and reduce rework.
- Human error, reliability & risk: Spot error traps, apply practical controls and use proportionate HRA where needed.
- Trials, evaluation & procurement: Put HF into requirements, design reviews, user trials and acceptance to de-risk delivery and through-life support.
- Case studies and best practice: From mission planning through to equipment maintenance in workshops and deployed settings across land, sea and air.
Benefits
- Improved operational safety through better design, procedures and training.
- Higher mission effectiveness with faster, more accurate decisions under pressure.
- Reduced through-life cost by getting the human element right early.
- Better adoption & stakeholder buy-in via clear communications and engagement.
- Assurance confidence by evidencing robust consideration of the human element.
Questions you might have
Who is this Pathway for?
For individuals - this Pathway is open entry, so you don't need any prior qualifications, although it does help to be working in a defence environment. It's designed for safety managers, engineers and maintenance personnel looking to enhance their skills and contribute to safer and more efficient defence operations.
For organisations - this Pathway is for any organisation involved in the defence industry looking to improve capability, enhance human performance and increase employee safety and wellbing.
How do I access the Pathway?
If you're an individual, simply pay the fee for Level 1 and enrol now! If you don't have an account with us already, you'll be asked to register so that you can seamlessly go through to the Pathway. Your account will then give you direct access whenever you need it and will hold a record of your achievements!
Level 2 will be available to purchase soon. Please contact us for more information at: [email protected]
How long will it take me to complete Level 1?
If you're working at the same time, it all depends on how much time you can give - it could take up to 6 to 8 months. There are 10 units in Level 1 of the Pathway, each with a number of topics which add up to 56 topics in total.
Each topic has content for you to read and watch, activities to test your learning, and there is a quiz at the end of each unit and a final quiz at the end of the level. Some activities are more involved than others so the topic could take from 2 hours to a day to complete. However you need to schedule your time, the content is written in bitesize chunks allowing you to stop and start easily.
How do I keep track of my learning?
Once you enrol, you'll get access to an online 'workbook' where you'll write up the activities associated with each topic of the Pathway. You can use it to keep notes and you can add photos and illustrations as a record of your learning. It will all be saved automatically in your account, together with your progress through the Pathway. This will enable you to look back over your notes and keep good track of how far you've come.
Ready to go?
If you're an organisation and would like to purchase more than 1 enrolment, please contact us.