Role of professional experience and job training in industrial risk assessment

Definition and evaluation of risk factors play a fundamental role in industrial safety and prevention of occupational accidents. Reliability and safety in industrial transformation processes are strictly connected to two factors, namely component/equipment breakdown frequency and human factor. In other words, bearing in mind the definition of reliability as “the probability that a system performs a function under stated conditions for a stated period of time”, we can refer to plant and human reliability. Human errors can arise because lack of experience, wrong learning processes, improper motivation, wrong attitudes. Probability to make errors over a period depends on some factors mainly job-training, professional experience and psychophysical stress. In particular, this study deals with accident frequency resulting from temporary work (or “work in leasing”).By applying typical risk analysis techniques adopted in process engineering, this paper is focused on human risk level assessment with emphasis on the role of professional experience and job training. Experimental results show that lower professional experience and direct job training on plant (both in process and manufacturing industries) are statistically correlated (P < 0.05) with higher injury frequency.