Investment Analysis Teams must identify for each alternative, the full range of human factors and interfaces (e.g., cognitive, organizational, physical, functional, environmental) necessary to achieve an acceptable level of performance for operating, maintaining, and supporting the system in concert with meeting the system’s functional requirements. The analysis should provide information on what is known and unknown about the human-system performance risks in meeting minimum system performance requirements.

Human factors that are relevant to meeting system performance and functional requirements include:

1. human performance (e.g., human capabilities and limitations, workload, function allocation, hardware and software design, decision aids, environmental constraints, and team versus individual performance)
2. training (e.g., length of training, training effectiveness, retraining, training devices and facilities, and embedded training)
3. staffing (e.g., staffing levels, team composition, and organizational structure)
4. personnel selection (e.g., minimum skill levels, special skills, and experience levels)
5. safety and health aspects (e.g., hazardous materials or conditions, system or equipment design, operational or procedural constraints, biomedical influences, protective equipment, and required warnings and alarms).

The purpose of human factors in the investment analysis process is to ensure that:

• Human-system capabilities and limitations are properly reflected in the system requirements
• Human-system performance characteristics and their associated cost, benefits, and risks assist in deciding among alternatives (especially since lifecycle operation and support costs are often largely dependent upon personnel-related costs)
• Human-system performance risks are appropriately addressed in program baselines

The investment analysis should consider the human factors issues identified in the Initial Requirements Document, and others as they surface in the conduct of the analysis, and their attendant risks.

The Investment Analysis Plan should include (as available) information about salient human factors issues, how human factors engineering and these specific issues will be assessed, and human factors activities needed to support the investment analysis process. Other information about schedules, costs, assessment criteria, roles and responsibilities may be addressed as appropriate.

Human factors risks should be evaluated as to their impacts on costs, schedule, and performance implications on the alternative investments being considered. For viable investment alternatives, remedies to human factors issues should be explored, and should be identified for the prospective IPT.

The human factors support to the Investment Analysis process and Team follows the general process flow for Investment Analyses which includes the investment analysis planning, requirements definition, alternative solution identification and analysis, affordability assessment, acquisition program baseline development, and support for the investment analysis reporting, briefing, and decision. Evaluation of human factors risk associated with investment analysis, and identification of remedial actions shall be undertaken in collaboration with the Office of Chief Scientist for Human Factors, and the designated Human Factors Coordinator. Evaluation shall be consistent with the latest version of the Human Factors Job Aid for Investment Analysis (AAR-100) as published in the Acquisition Management System Guidance, and use appropriate level analysis tools, such as the Human Factors Risk Assessment Guide for Investment Analysis (ASD-430).

The Human Factors Coordinator on the Investment Analysis Team provides the support for the integration of human factors engineering in the investment analysis phase of system development and acquisition. The HFC helps the Investment Analysis Team to initiate, structure, direct, and monitor their human factors efforts. The HFC serves with IA Team to identify, define, analyze, and report on human performance and human factors engineering considerations to ensure they are incorporated in investment decisions. Typical human-system performance and human factors engineering studies and analyses conducted, sponsored, or supported by the HFC include requirements analyses, baselines performance studies, trade-off determinations, alternative analyses, lifecycle cost estimates, cost-benefit analyses, risk assessments, supportability assessments, and operational suitability assessments. The HFC helps identify system specific and aggregate technical human factors engineering problems and issues that might otherwise go undetected for their obscurity, complexity, or elaborate inter-relationships. The human performance considerations are developed for staffing levels, operator and maintainer skills, training strategies, human-computer interface, human engineering design features, safety and health issues, and workload and operational performance considerations in procedures and other human-system interfaces. The HFC facilitates the establishment of the necessary tools, techniques, methods, databases, metrics, measures, criteria, and lessons learned to conduct human factors analyses in investment analysis activities. The HFC provides technical quality control of human factors products to the IA Team, participates in special working groups, assists in team reviews, helps prepare IA documentation, and collaborates on technical exchanges among government and contractor personnel.

Rationale:

The projected growth in air traffic suggests that technological changes in air traffic control must be made to avert future overload of the system and its controllers – especially since there are practical limits to what can be achieved by adding more controllers. The challenges posed by the predicted growth in air traffic, the aging of existing equipment, and the implementation of new technology are compounded by increasingly severe economic constraints, affecting both government budgets and the aviation industry. In response to these pressures, the FAA established a formal Investment Analysis (IA) process to provide guidance for acquisition decisions by the Joint Resources Council (JRC).

It is significant that IA addresses the question of tradeoffs between competing solutions and how these tradeoffs are to be made or resolved. All of the IA steps bring acquisition decisions into the arena of human factors, which can help identify requirements important in supporting human performance, help determine system performance criteria necessary to enhance human problem-solving and effective decision making, and help identify risks associated with system and human reliability. These requirements will become increasingly important as automation begins to greatly expand the potential to support cognitive activities in, for example, ATC and maintenance, e.g., problem detection and resolution, planning, failure or error management and so on.

The payoffs in considering human factors related issues during Investment Analysis are realized in: improved acquisition decisions, reduced training and maintenance costs, fewer human errors and improved safety, higher probability of system success, and improved user acceptance. Without applying a systematic human factors assessment in IA, attainment of an effective ATC system is highly unlikely.

Failure to apply systematic human factors knowledge and methods in the IA process can be costly – current research indicates that the estimated contribution of human errors to mishaps, accidents, and incidents in large, complex systems is about 80%. Increasing automation in ATC does not eliminate the need for human factors assessment since the human will still be involved as an operator and maintainer of systems. Increased automation simply shifts human responsibilities from one control mode to another.

To date, FAA’s experience has been that consideration of human factors issues and their mitigation in project development and deployment has varied from approximately a $1 million dollar outlay for the Display Channel Complex Rehost (DCCR) to $100 million for the Voice Switching and Communication System (VSCS). In addition, there is a projected $175 million outlay for the Standard Terminal Arrival Route System (STARS). In the first two projects, human factors issues were accommodated as part of the ongoing project efforts in order to customize the technology to the work environment. It is important to note that human factors did not delay the project schedule. The third project (STARS) started as a COTS effort, but later it was discovered that human factors issues required an extension in project implementation by about two years. Clearly, the required effort to address human factors issues and its costs will depend on how complex the system is, how much it will directly impact day to day operations, and the skill required by the workforce to adapt and/or learn the new operating requirements of the system. Note, the complexity of the system and its impact on required skills is directly related to the issue of usability. The greater the usability the less the cost.