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Brian has thirty years experience in all of the Human Factors aspects of complex systems. He has had a particular interest in complex human-machine systems, including intelligent decision support systems. He spent 10 years in the aircraft industry before moving to YARD Ltd. where he worked on ship and submarine design until leaving to start Process Contracting Limited in 1999. Much of his recent work has been as a consultant to Lloyd's Register.

Themes in his work include the following:

• Taking a systems approach to incident analysis.
• Developing ways of improving the design and operation of alarms onboard ship.
• Developing ways of addressing the Human Element more effectively in rules and regulations.
• Improving Human Element aspects of bridge design and operation (he is UK rep. for ISO TC8/SC5 Ships' Bridge Layout).
• Reviving the Scottish local group for the International Council on Systems Engineering, INCOSE ECOSSE.
• The development of virtual shipbuilding at the Digital Design Studio, Glasgow School of Art, where he is an Honorary Professor.
• The definition of human and social issues concerned with e-government, via the Human Centred Process Improvement Group (HCPIG).

The development of usability assurance, i.e. assurance of safe and effective operation from the early stages of a system through to operational use. This is of particular relevance when developing complex systems for use by reduced numbers of staff, or where there is a change in the context of use.

Brian is co-ordinator of the Maritime Ergonomics Special Interest Group for the Ergonomics Society http://www.maresig.org

Recent assignments include:

• Development of Rules and Regulations, and other ways of addressing the Human Element in merchant shipping, addressing a wide range of topics.
• Support to the Design Authority for the Astute Class submarine.
• Review of nuclear safety case from a human factors point of view.
• Contributed to the authorship and editing of ISO PAS 18152 'A specification for the process assessment of human-system issues' (the Human-Systems model, or UMMi).
• Investigation into human aspects of Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA).
• Investigation into the information flow between Manpower, Personnel, Training, and system acquisition.
• Definition and prototype evaluation of a future Platform Management System concept.
• Supervision of research into advanced visualisation, including virtual shipbuilding.
• Supervision of research into Intelligent Agents.
• Support to the '13407 for Government' activities of the HCPIG.