Understanding the forces at play.

This is our 50th episode! My under lying mission, when planning each series and episode is to ensure that, we introduce our listeners to a deeper  and sometimes new, understanding of the forces at play when it comes to employee awareness, behaviour and culture.

In this, the 50th episdoe of the Re-thinking the human factor I wanted to highlight how, by taking the time out to re-think what the forces at play are, when it comes to your employees awareness, behaviour and culture, you can overcome the seemingly insurmountable challange of effectively managing human factor risks.

Our guest, is Dr. Ben Evans. Ben is an aeronautical engineer, and he’s applying his understanding of the forces at play, to the seemingly insurmountable challenge of conquering the a world record at the Bloodhound Land Speed Project.

Ben talks about the laws of science and engineering which help him to find the marginal opportunities for improvement which are helping the team towards breaking the world record. But, in this interview, it’s also clear to me, that success is a matter of teamwork often with colleagues with different and sometimes conflicting priorities.

Understanding the forces at play includes understanding science and nature, even when it comes to human awareness, behaviour and culture, but it’s also about understanding the forces at play across stakeholders, where often conflicting priorities and interests can arise. Getting the “Team” aspect right, you could argue is as important as the science which drives decisions its self.

Ben Evans Biography 

Dr Ben Evans is an Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering at Swansea University and is a member of the design team for the BLOODHOUND Land Speed Record project with overall responsibility for aerodynamic modelling. Dr Evans’ research interests range from computational shape optimisation and high speed aerodynamic modelling to molecular gas dynamics simulation. He also has interests in engineering public engagement and engineering education. 

Dr Evans studied Aerospace and Aerothermal Engineering at Jesus College, Cambridge graduating in 2004.  He completed a PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics at Swansea University in 2008.  In his PhD research he focussed on computational solutions to the Boltzmann equation applied to problems in the field of molecular gas dynamics. 

Key Topics

• Understanding the forces at play!