Human Factors in Diving

Gareth retired after 25 years in the Royal Air Force in February 2015 and it was during this period that his interest in Human Factors in diving germinated. Having seen how military aviation learned from its mistakes, he tried to apply these processes to diving. Five years ago he wrote a white paper on the application of a human factors model to diving which wasn’t too well received. To improve his credibility and improve the body of knowledge in this area, four years ago he enrolled on a self-funded, part-time PhD examining the role of HF in diving incidents at Cranfield in the UK. Last year he recognized that there was a gap in knowledge of HF skills in diving, and created a classroom-based course and an online course to teach and coach human factors skills. He truly believes that if ‘human error’ is the answer that comes back from an ‘investigation’, it is only the starting point to determine why it made sense to those involved to behave in the way they did. His key aim is to develop a Just Culture within the diving community, so we can continue to learn from others’ mistakes and behaviors, by being able to talk about those adverse events free from negative criticism. As well as being a PhD candidate, he is currently self-employed as a consultant teaching and providing advice on human factors and human performance in a number of domains including healthcare and high risk businesses.