Human factors audit programs for nonrepetitive tasks

In order to provide aircraft maintenance and inspection personnel with a rapid means of locating the human-system mismatches that can lead to errors, two human factors audits were developed. Both the inspection audit and the maintenance audit are in the form of measurement checklists, usable either on a portable computer or in paper form. Both were tested for reliability and modified until high reliability was achieved. Both were validated against human factors professionals, with both programs identifying more mismatches than the practitioners. The programs are in use at an airline as a complement to existing safety and quality audit systems.