News from The Keil Centre

The Keil Centre's book on Human Factors

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In 2016 The Keil Centre launched a book on how to incorporate human factors considerations within the design and operation of chemical and processing plants. The book was published by El…

Our tools for analysing Human Factors in Incident Investigation

The Keil Centre developed a set of to assist investigators who do not have a human factors background to dig deeper into the behavioural reasons of w…

Fatigue Management - Latest Research

When we think of fatigue, we often think of little or no sleep, sleep disorders or accidents that have resulted from fatigued workers. While getting enough sleep is vital for fatigue management, and …

New Training Course - Investigative Interviewing

When conducting investigations into incidents/accidents, interviews are an important source of evidence; sometimes they are the only source of evidence. However interviewing skills do not come natura…

Trauma and Resilience

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Conversational Leadership

"Conversations are like fuel – it’s the energy that keeps a company going"

Conversation matters; through conversations we share ideas, enthusiasms, concerns and question…

Stress on the rise

The latest figures published by the reveal a worrying trend. Stress and mental health problems amongst workers in Great Britain is now at its highest level for 17 …

Ten Years of User Conferences

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Clinical Services Update

Our team has had a busy year providing support to new and existing clients through various treatment methods. Our psychologists were able to offer over 1330 individual psychologi…

Procedures - are they still working as needed?

We know that procedures are an important part of our safety system. We use them a lot, often multiple times in a day. They are also one of the first things we tend to look at after an accident or inc…

Influencing Culture

Across many industries, the concept of safety culture and its importance is becoming widespread and well accepted. Implementation of tools and guidance for the workforce to support culture developmen…

Safety Conversations - An important but difficult skill

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Safety conversations can occur when we see someone – a co-worker, supervisor or contractor – doing something unsafe, or with the potential to compromise safety. They can range from im…

The Risk of Cognitive Bias

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An expert team is investigating a complex process incident that has had a considerable negative impact within the organisation. The team members share a similar background, and they spend a lo…

Report Writing Skills

The most important aspect of any investigation is discovering what happened and why, so that it can be prevented from reoccurring. While there are a number of areas and skills that come into doing t…

Human Factors for Strengthening Organisational Performance (Australia)

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Managing human factors: Where do we start?

Most of the time people get things right. We plan to act in a certain way to get a particular outcome, and we get the outcome we want. But every so often things go wrong. We make mi…

Ergonomics Essentials dates for 2018

Our next course is to be held at the Keil Centre offices in Edinburgh between 1^st – 5^th October 2018.

‘Ergonomics Essentials’ is a comprehensive 5-d…

The impact of stress in YOUR workplace

Stress… pressure… tension… Most of us experience some degree of stress in the workplace on a daily basis. Often it can be a good thing in small doses, leading us to p…

Upcoming professional development training – 16 & 17 May 2018 in Perth, WA

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Our newsletters

The Keil Centre produces a bi-annual newsletter, Business In Mind, which contains articles about recent projects we have delivered and any latest business news.

If you wish to sign up to receive a…

Fatigue

Fatigue is a major problem in today’s society. From shift-work and non-traditional working hours to the challenge of balancing work/life demands, it is getting harder to obtain sufficient sleep…

Human Factors in Investigation

During an investigation it is often tempting to focus on finding the ‘problem’ and fixing it so the event can’t happen again. When the problem or fault is a technical issue, this is…

Communication Techniques

Communication – particularly the ability to communicate well – is an area that most people take for granted. Often, not much thought goes into how we communicate, particularly when we kno…

James Bunn joins The Keil Centre

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has recently joined The Keil Centre as a Principal Human Factors Consultant, based in Edinburgh.

James is an Ergonomics and Human Factors spe…

Positive safety communication

Communication is central to our everyday life as humans. As such, we can sometimes underestimate the importance of communicating accurately and the need to ensure our conversation partner has develop…

Identifying the risks - before and after an accident

Common, everyday errors occurring within high risk industries can sometimes have disastrous results. While it is always important to understand the error that was made, it is often the case that thes…

Enhancing the mental health of your workforce

It has long been recognised that the mental health of individuals in a workforce contributes to business viability. For example, we know that mental health problems can affect productivity and …

Safety Leadership

A crucial part of an organisation’s safety performance comes down to strong safety leadership at all levels. Research has shown that certain leadership styles are more closely related to a posi…

Pre-accident Investigation

Traditionally many organisations have focused on learning from incidents and accidents to make system improvements. Over time, sources of information for improvements can include close calls, near mi…

Perth, Western Australia

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The Keil Centre is pleased to announce that another round of the very successful Human Factors in Health and Safety Professional Development programme…

Is your training as effective as it could be?

Many organisations follow a set initial training programme for all new employees. Often this is carried out with little reflection on whether or not it still meets the needs of the organisation. It i…

IChemE Award Winners

Congratulations to Tim Sweet of Jacobs and Ross Swainson of Caltex Australia who both won an award from The Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) for best application of human factors knowledge.…

Wha…

Melanie Todd joins The Keil Centre

We are pleased to announce that has recently joined The Keil Centre as a Principal Human Factors Advisor, based in Canberra.

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A Year in Review 2016

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at The Keil Centre!

As the year draws to a close, we reflect on many varied and interesting projects across the globe. We have high…

Out now! Human Factors book by The Keil Centre’s expert team

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The Keil Centre is pleased to announce that it has written a book on how to incorporate human factors considerations within the design and operation of chemical and processing&nbs…

My Team, My Responsibility

The Keil Centre has worked with Johnson Matthey to develop the The ‘My Team, My Responsibility’ programme. The programme involves six short interactive learning modules, each aligned to t…

New Clinical Services Manager

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We are pleased to announce that our Counselling Psychologist, , will be assuming the role of Clinical Services Manager from October 2016. Although Jenny Foley will be step…

Training that Delivers in Practice

The Keil Centre is continuing their partnership with North Ayrshire Council to deliver effective senior and middle management Leadership Development Training as part of the Council’s Leadership…

Nicole Gray joins The Keil Centre

We are pleased to announce that has recently joined The Keil Centre as a Principal Human Factors Advisor, based in Brisbane. Some description

Nicole is a passionate advocate of a systems approach t…

EHS Culture Standard: Tools and Techniques

An EHS Culture Framework sets out the specific, critical behaviours required at each level of an organisation to achieve a strong safety culture and excellent safety performance. The approach h…

‘Safe’ Products and Services by The Keil Centre

The Keil Centre has been providing award-winning, internationally recognised, expert consultancy under the ‘Human Factors’ heading for over two decades. Under the broad banner ‘safe…

Are your investigations uncovering the WHY?

Developing effective interviewing skills could be the key.

Many high reliability organisations have invested heavily in the implementation of a structured incident investigation and analysis proce…

IIP Platinum status - first in Scotland!

The Keil Centre is proud to announce its recent Investors In People (IIP) accreditation at Platinum level, the first company in Scotland to achieve the highest level of IIP accreditation.

The Ke…

IChemE Hazards 26 - 24-26 May 2016

The Keil Centre is proud to be the leading sponsor for the IChemE Hazards 26 conference, taking place on 24-26 May 2016 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

Widely recognised as …

Investigating to understand human and organisational contributions

Do investigations in your organisation get to the underlying human and organisational contributions? Does your organisation have people with the right skills and with access to the right method…

Fatigue Risk Management

Fatigue is a well-recognised workplace safety concern. The impact of fatigue can affect:

Personal safety through poor coordination or falling asleep while driving;
Process safety throu…

Managing Organisational Change

Over the last 12 months, many companies have embarked upon significant change programs. To meet falling commodity prices and project demands, many companies are considering restructures, merger…

Safety Conversations

Having an open working environment where employees are comfortable and confident in speaking up about any safety concerns and intervening if something is unsafe is an integral part of a safe organisa…

IChemE HF in H&S Professional Development Programme

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Brisbane and Melbourne

The Keil Centre is pleased to announce that another round of the very successful modular Human Factors in Health and Safety Professional Development programme, run in p…

Reinforcing safety culture

Developing a strong safety culture is key to excellent safety performance. An organisation will often develop a safety culture framework that describes behaviours and thinking styles it wants to prom…

Building resilience during change

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Early adopters

Is your company or site seeking to understand its current level of Human Factors integration and develop a coherent HF strategy? We are seeking companies who aim to do just this and are keen to be ea…

Cognitive biases

Awareness and assessment of risk, and decisions made based on those assessments, occur at all levels of an organisation. These decisions often require people to make accurate judgments about future l…

Psychological Health Modules

There is now a sizeable body of evidence that suggests it is important to build resilience and tackle psychological ill-health at work; but what does this really mean for individuals and organisation…

Designing usable procedures

A common problem in many technical organisations is their procedures, which are effectively an interface on a piece of paper. They can be lengthy, complex, hard to navigate and read, and many do not …

Holiday stress

The summer is here and for many of us this means the arrival of long-awaited holiday time. Travelling and holidaying with children comes with its own set of challenges and expectations. As much as ho…

Coaching

Why are my actions not working as I expect them to? Why am I not as effective as I hope to be? One of the most commonly reported benefits of coaching is the ability to reflect on pattern…

Behaviour Standard - beyond competencies?

Competencies have been the main player in town when it comes to organisational behaviour for the past few decades. However, many organisations find themselves with complex, and sometimes multip…

Organisational approaches to fatigue management

Fatigue is better understood as 'tiredness' for most of us. Sometimes we recognise it all too easily and at other times we don’t and it overtakes us: e.g. falling asleep on the sofa in fr…

Edinburgh, UK

The Keil Centre is pleased to announce that another round of the very successful modular Human Factors in Health and Safety Professional Development programme, run in partnership wit…

Healthy Working Lives aims to improve healt…