–There is a key but under-appreciated virtue in control room operators working within their shared comfort zone of team situation awareness: their knowing when it is a mistake to comply with a regulation or protocol that would work against system reliability and safety.
Which just goes to show that it’s a mistake to think all errors are mistakes.
–Noncompliance may be a regulatory error for the regulator of record; the same noncompliance may be an important option for system reliability when the task environment indicates the regulation to be defective. It’s not a control room mistake if system high reliability compels the real-time commission of a noncompliance error.
What needs to be distinguished are the volatility conditions and reliability mandates under which “operator error” is forced. Yes, you can’t un-ring the bell once rung, but it’s always been more complex than that.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 