Abstract
Ph.D.
Power plants are generally considered as the lifeblood of economy and social wellbeing in various developed and developing states. Thus, there is a need to effectively manage and control the operational processes of power plants for the continuous supply of electricity. Maintenance is one of the key operational processes for ensuring the reliability, availability and efficiency of power plants. Now, there has been great efforts towards enhancing maintenance of power plants. However, the complexity of technology encompassed in designs of new power plants and frequent maintenance in old power plants create difficulties for maintenance personnel to adequately cognize the system’s behaviour. Hence, there are still incidents of unexpected breakdowns and even catastrophic failures due to maintenance problems. Maintenance problems in power plants are complex and heterogeneous, so they are rarely caused by one feature or constituent of a socio-technical system. Therefore, power plants can benefit from the adoption of human factors engineering (HFE) which leads to systematic evaluations, proper identification of problems, prioritization of problems, and evolution of effective and practical solutions. Ever since HFE became a subject of scientific inquiry, several human factors models and tools to be integrated with maintenance and other operational processes emerged. The aviation industry is known to have advanced in the application of HFE in maintenance and has reaped a number of benefits. However, there has been little effort or slow pace to formally adopt HFE in maintenance of power plants. Even though the possible benefits of HFE are well documented, the adoption process needs strategic planning and a critical review of many facets for the realisation of those benefits. One of the key features of strategic planning is evaluating the readiness to implement HFE, where the current status of the organisation and its practices are measured against the requirements of HFE implementation and readiness criteria. Considering power plants in the South African context where there is lack of adoption or inadequate use of HFE, there was a concern with regard to factors and readiness criteria that could be used to embark on the readiness assessment. The problem was escalated by the absence of reports, guidelines and scholarly writings on the HFE implementation domain...