Ian Pemberton is a Chartered Ergonomist and Human Factors Specialist (CIEHF, MCIEHF) and Managing Director of Human Focus. His work focuses on how safety systems actually function in complex, high-risk organisations — and why established controls such as near miss reporting, procedures, training, and assurance processes so often fail to generate meaningful learning or early warning of serious harm.
He specialises in examining work as it is really carried out, exploring how planning decisions, resourcing, competence, coordination, authority gradients, and time pressure shape risk in practice. His approach is grounded in modern safety science, human factors, and systems thinking, with a particular emphasis on separating administrative activity and “paper safety” from the conditions that genuinely control serious risk.
Through Human Focus, Ian supports organisations to move beyond volume-driven reporting and compliance-led assurance, toward approaches that generate insight into critical tasks, systemic contributors, and the organisational conditions under which serious harm becomes possible.
