On Wednesday 29 October 2025, British Steel hosted the CATCH Human Factors Network in Scunthorpe. The event was well attended with over 20 delegates in person and via Teams. Chris Marron, Competence Framework Lead at Dr Reddy’s and Network Chair welcomed delegates and introductions were made.

Fiona Bird, Head of Human Factors from Pendyne, led a workshop on Human Factors Integration, reflecting on her extensive experience of projects in the rail sector.

Fiona began by explaining how Human Factors Leaders often find themselves isolated in their role, with a strong message from Fiona being to reach out to others early, find your allies and understand their role within various projects.  Human Factors Leaders become experts on managing compromises, communication and clarity, whilst also maintaining purpose and boundaries. Fiona then invited delegates shared their experiences on finding allies across diverse project teams.

Fiona went on to explain how Human Factors Leaders will benefit from knowing your uniqueness and being able to clearly define your value to both leaders and managers. The advice given by Fiona was to explain how HF makes or saves money and how compliance with HF can gain product acceptance and triggers milestone payments. Compliance with HF avoids fines or late fees, while also reducing the risk of accidents, penalties and reputational damage. By communicating benefits more clearly, Human Factors Leaders are better able to convey their role better without giving a lecture.

Mapping history of Human Factors within your business or sector can be extremely valuable, particularly when the aim is to get colleagues to buy in to Human Factors as an integral role. Accident history, especially accidents that highlight Human Factors can be impactful and essential to the discussion surrounding the importance of Human Factors. Fiona also explained how business may also be able to map their evolutionary maturity level, and that within the rail sector this has evolved significantly through mature and advanced approaches to Human Factors. Fiona once again opened the floor to delegates and their personal experiences of finding their own personal why within their companies.

After a break, Fiona explored the importance of requirements, including the process of understanding the requirements, how best to map the topics, identification of Human Factors activities & deliverables and finally the need of requirements to ensure alignment across the project. The group learnt about best practice for both writing a Human Factors Integration Plan and delivering the plan. Fiona finished by taking questions from the group, and the meeting closed with delegates sharing updates from their own companies

The next meeting of the CATCH Human Factors Network will be held on Wednesday 25 February 2026.  For more information about this and other CATCH Networks, please contact katie.hedges@catchuk.org