Hans Houtman’s interest in human factors in safety critical operations originates from his work as an investigator of accidents and incidents. For almost 30 years he has been involved in investigating thousands of aviation accidents and incidents, small, great, even catastrophic such as those in Amsterdam (The Netherlands 4-10-1992) or Faro (Portugal 21-12-1992).
His experience taught Hans an important principle: procedures help save lives, but the person working with them is the critical success factor. That realisation drove him to become an instructor in aviation legislation for future pilots. The success of his instruction inspired Hans to set up Aviation Legislation Information in 1991. To this day, he is a trainer and advisor on safety issues in aviation.
Hans got more and more passionate about human factors in safety. He realised that the same processes are at work in high risk operations everywhere. From 2007 to 2009 he took the Master Course “Human Factors and System Safety” with professor Sidney Dekker at the University of Lund in Sweden. On completing the course, he joined the Lund University Leonardo da Vinci Center for Complexity and Systems Thinking as a teaching assistant. Here, he coaches students in the Master Course and supervises thesis students.
While Hans continued teaching and advising in aviation, he also decided to apply his knowledge and experience in a much broader field and founded Just Culture – Human Factors in Safety Critical Operations. Continuing to combine theory and practice, he looks forward to contributing to the further development of safety in high risk organizations and the young science of human factors.
Hans is an associate member (human factors specialist) of the European Association for Aviation Psychology.
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