Fatigue Management
Fatigue Management
What is the way to best understand and report fatigue for personnel working in shifts?
Re: Fatigue Management
For shift personnel, fatigue is best treated as a risk exposure, not simply as hours worked. The most useful approach is to combine roster-based fatigue exposure + actual working hours/overtime + fatigue indicators + critical-task exposure.
I would recommend having three levels of fatigue KPIs.
A. Exposure indicators — leading indicators
These tell management how much fatigue risk the roster is creating.
Examples:
% shifts exceeding company fatigue threshold
% shifts with insufficient minimum rest
Number of consecutive night shifts
Number of shifts exceeding 12 h
Number of employees exceeding monthly working-hour threshold
Overtime hours/person/month
% personnel working during circadian low period
% roster deviations
% shifts where planned break requirements were not achieved
For example:
Fatigue exposure rate = Fatigue-risk shifts / Total shifts × 100
This is much more useful than simply reporting "3 fatigue cases."
I would recommend having three levels of fatigue KPIs.
A. Exposure indicators — leading indicators
These tell management how much fatigue risk the roster is creating.
Examples:
% shifts exceeding company fatigue threshold
% shifts with insufficient minimum rest
Number of consecutive night shifts
Number of shifts exceeding 12 h
Number of employees exceeding monthly working-hour threshold
Overtime hours/person/month
% personnel working during circadian low period
% roster deviations
% shifts where planned break requirements were not achieved
For example:
Fatigue exposure rate = Fatigue-risk shifts / Total shifts × 100
This is much more useful than simply reporting "3 fatigue cases."
Re: Fatigue Management
For an operating site, I would structure the monthly report approximately like this:
Personnel Fatigue – Monthly Dashboard
Workforce
Total shift personnel
Total shifts
Total hours worked
Total overtime hours
Fatigue exposure
% shifts > prescribed duration
% shifts with insufficient recovery
Number of consecutive night-shift exceedances
Number of personnel exceeding overtime threshold
Number of roster deviations
Fatigue condition
Fatigue reports
Fitness-for-duty interventions
Personnel relieved from duty because of fatigue
Safety-critical exposure
Safety-critical tasks performed during high fatigue-risk periods
High-risk fatigue exposures requiring intervention
Outcomes
Fatigue-related near misses
Fatigue-related incidents
Human-performance events with fatigue identified as a contributing factor
Most important trend
Don't just show:
Fatigue cases: 5
Show:
Total shifts: 4,850
High-fatigue-risk shifts: 126 (2.6%)
Safety-critical activities during high-risk periods: 18
Fatigue interventions: 7
Fatigue-related near misses: 1
That tells management exposure > control > consequence, which is much more useful.
Personnel Fatigue – Monthly Dashboard
Workforce
Total shift personnel
Total shifts
Total hours worked
Total overtime hours
Fatigue exposure
% shifts > prescribed duration
% shifts with insufficient recovery
Number of consecutive night-shift exceedances
Number of personnel exceeding overtime threshold
Number of roster deviations
Fatigue condition
Fatigue reports
Fitness-for-duty interventions
Personnel relieved from duty because of fatigue
Safety-critical exposure
Safety-critical tasks performed during high fatigue-risk periods
High-risk fatigue exposures requiring intervention
Outcomes
Fatigue-related near misses
Fatigue-related incidents
Human-performance events with fatigue identified as a contributing factor
Most important trend
Don't just show:
Fatigue cases: 5
Show:
Total shifts: 4,850
High-fatigue-risk shifts: 126 (2.6%)
Safety-critical activities during high-risk periods: 18
Fatigue interventions: 7
Fatigue-related near misses: 1
That tells management exposure > control > consequence, which is much more useful.