MY STORY
I graduated with an MSc in psychology in Poland. I was fascinated by culture change and wanted to make a meaningful difference in this area. I wanted to become an expert, and I knew that an MSc degree was not enough.
I found a professional doctorate program in the UK focused on the practical implementation of modern safety science. I was debating with myself if I should go. My English language wasn’t very good and the prospect of leaving my job and family behind to live in another country was a scary outlook. After long deliberations, I decided to go.
I graduated with a practitioner doctorate degree, but my thinking, language, and practice were dominated by academic style. This had many advantages but also did not resonate with practitioners.
I completed a popular safety qualification and noticed a huge gap between what I learned as part of my Ph.D. and in this course. With a background in psychology, many of the popular risk management practices did not make sense to me. I felt these popular tools were missing a big part of what makes the work safe.
Throughout my career, I’ve seen repeat and surprise accidents, the investigation findings completely missing the point, the inability of corrective actions to make any meaningful improvement, and a huge misunderstanding of how human and organizational behaviour works.
After 2 years of work at a large power station in the UK, I started a new role at bp. Although I could offer many scientific tools, what I had to offer didn’t quite resonate with the leadership. They wanted simplicity, not academic research complexity.
My approach was not working. In just two years, I almost lost my job three times. All this was happening while I was getting married. Due to the uncertainty, I lost my house and went through acute stress episodes.
I’ve met my mentor who was supportive, listening and guiding me through this difficult time.
I decided to spend much more time with people on the frontline and find ways to turn the science into practice.
The more time I spent in operations, the more I learned how to apply science without using scientific jargon. I started receiving positive feedback such as “Marcin, people are raving about your work“.
After a few challenging years, I was able to operationalize science in a way that made a real difference and won multiple industry awards.
I now had a unique combination of scientific background combined with a proven practical application and experience in the frontline and headquarters.
I’ve developed practical, scalable solutions that help to modernize safety and made it available through various industry bodies.
I chair four most-prestigious Human Factors Groups in the industry, I write industry guidance, I’m invited to deliver keynote speeches to thousands of employees, I authored the majority of practical tools and templates available in the industry, and implement cutting-edge solutions at scale to transform corporate cultures.
INDUSTRY WORK
2022 – 2024 – Vice-Chair of the Human Factors Sub-Committee
2019 – Co-author of the IOGP Report 621 “Demystifying Human Factors: Building confidence in human factors investigation”. Access here.
2020 – 2023 – Chairperson of the SPE Human Factors Technical Section.
2021 – Author of the guidance “Are you applying Human Factors / Human Performance as per the Industry Guidance?”. Download here.
2021 – Human Factors questions integrated into the Petrobowl student competition. Learn more.
2018 – Co-founder of the Human Performance Oil and Gas. The first industry body devoted to helping the industry with the practical Human Performance.
2019 – Lead Designer – simplified Human Reliability Tool, called Walk Through / Talk Through. It allows to pro-actively identify where the next mistake or non-compliance can happen. Learn more.
2020 – Lead Designer – Human Performance Recommended Practice. The industry standard for the practical application of an HF / HP program. See work to date.
2021 – 1-h training. How to conduct the human factors analysis during an incident investigation using a dropped object video case study. Watch here.
2018 – Lead Designer of the Human Performance Competency Pathway. Initially developed at BP to allow cost-effective, flexible and scalable mechanism to upskill HSE and operational personnel on HF / HP.
The Pathway includes practical tools focused on 9 different topics including HF in investigations or psychology of procedural non-compliance.
2018 – Co-designer of the Human Factors in Incident Investigation toolkit. A practical guidance on how to integrate HF with the investigation process. The toolkit includes additional tools such as fatigue analysis, or human error analysis tools. Access here.
2021 – Co-chair of the Human Factors Working Group. Learn more.
2018 – I designed the first draft of the HF questions to be added into the contract pre-qualification process. These questions with some modifications are now part of the Contract Pre-qualification service in the UK.
AWARDS
2020 – The Center for Offshore Safety (COS) – Safety Leadership Awards.
Integrity Category
2018 – Outstanding Young Professional Award – International Association of Oil and Gas
Producers (IOGP)
The mechanisms underpinning the program are described here.
PUBLICATIONS
PAPERS:
Psychology in the Oilfield: A New Era of Safety and Operational Performance. Oilman Magazine (2022)
Rewarding safety performance: Improving safety or maintaining beliefs? Safety Science, (2022)
Why people don’t see hazards. 1 Percent Safer Book, (2020)
Why people don’t see hazards: a human performance perspective. Drilling Contractor, (2020)
Why people don’t follow procedures: a Human Performance Perspective. Drilling Contractor, (2020)
A brief history: the evolution of human factors and human performance. Drilling Contractor, (2020)
Empirical validation of operating discipline as a leading indicator of safety outputs and plant performance. Safety Science, (2018)
From individual behaviour to system weaknesses: The re-design of the Just Culture process in an international energy company. A case study. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, (2018).
COMMENTARY: Integrating Behavioral Science with Process Safety Management. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, (2017)
