Human performance improvement tools and situation awareness in nuclear power plant outage work

Several human performance improvement tools (HPIs) are available to support the safe execution of work in scheduled maintenance outages in nuclear power plants (NPPs). Many can be conceived as “situation awareness tools” as they are intended to help outage workers form an accurate understanding of their task and surroundings and be sensitive to the presence of hazards and performance risks. Yet only a small selection of HPI tools have been explicitly linked to situation awareness. Furthermore, how these HPI tools improve situation awareness and, in turn, the safe execution of outage work, has not been thoroughly elaborated. In the present paper we address these limitations by conceptualizing how a broader range of HPI tools used in outages could prevent “situation awareness errors” in perceiving, comprehending, and projecting how a situation could develop. In doing so, we generate knowledge that can help NPP outage organizations and workers to make better decisions about the selection and use of HPI tools and direct future research on HPI tool usage and effectiveness.