Ron McLeod combines strong academic credentials with extensive applied industrial and commercial experience. He holds an Honours degree in Psychology, an MSc in Ergonomics and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Science and has spent more than 35 years working as a Human Factors specialist in safety critical and high hazard industries. Until 2014 he was Global Discipline Lead for Human Factors in Royal Dutch Shell.
Ron has been influential helping industry learn, develop and apply best practice in Human Factors in the management of major hazards. This has included taking an active, and regularly a leadership, role in organisations including the International Oil and Gas Producer’s Association (IOGP), the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the UK’s Process Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC), the Energy Institute (EI), the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF), and the Centre for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS). He has been a Trustee and Member of Council of the CIEHF and has served on committee for the US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He currently serves on the board of Directors of the SPE’s Human Factors Technical Section.
Ron’s first book “Designing for Human reliability: Human Factors Engineering in the Oil, Gas and Process Industries” was published in 2015. He has published numerous articles, peer reviewed papers and book chapters on aspects of managing Human Factors in journals including The Chemical Engineer, Oil and Gas Facilities, Process Safety and Environmental Performance and Chemical Engineering Transactions. He chaired and was lead author for two recent CIEHF White Papers (‘Human Factors in Barrier Management’, and ‘Learning from Adverse Events’ – both available as free downloads from www.ergonomics.org.uk) and is currently leading a project to develop a White Paper on ‘Human Factors in Automation’.