The Story So Far

Ask what ErgoSphere is and the easy answer is a number: fifty-three tools. It is the wrong answer, and a new page on this site is the long version of the right one.

Every Human Factors project starts the same way. A new folder, named the way the last one was named. A spreadsheet for the issues register, with the columns rebuilt from memory. An integration plan copied from the last job, headings kept and contents deleted. A standard opened and read for the clauses that apply, which get copied out by hand into a requirements workbook. By three in the afternoon there are seven files across five applications, no findings yet, and not one link between any of them.

Twelve weeks later

That folder is twenty-nine items. The same requirement lives in three of them. The issues register has a "DO NOT EDIT" copy and a working copy, and both have been edited. There are two reports saved four hours apart, one of which became the PDF the client is holding, and which one is not recorded anywhere.

The questions that folder cannot answer are the questions you get asked at the gate. Which revision is the client holding right now. Which of their comments were answered in Rev C, and where. Who changed the severity on issue 17, and when. Whether the register still agrees with the report. Not one of them is a Human Factors question. All of them are questions you will be asked.

The point

The tools were never the problem. Even where budget is not the obstacle - and in plenty of organisations there is no tooling budget because there is no tooling - there is nowhere to put the work. That is the gap ErgoSphere was built to close: requirements, standards, analysis, registers, plans and issued deliverables in one project file, each one referencing the others.

The new page walks that folder file by file, and then shows what each file becomes when the project is one item instead of twenty-nine. The fifty-three tools are the proof that the platform is complete. They were never the reason for it.

Human Factors has had tools. It has not had a platform.

You know this folder →

Version 1.6.1.0 shipped on 4 September 2026, and almost none of it is a new feature. The method set is closed at fifty-three tools, and the engineering effort now goes into proving what is already in the platform rather than adding to it.

The short version

• The dossier programme is the roadmap. Every method is read back against the paper or standard it comes from, line by line, with each departure written down and closed. Nine methods were re-read this cycle, and most of what the reading found was agreement between the tool and its source.
• Where it found a departure, it closed it. HE-HAZOP gained two published steps the worksheet had no field for, SART's two in-project surfaces were reconciled onto a single figure, and a compliance score computed over a register with nothing applicable in it now reads as absent rather than as zero.
• ErgoSphere Viewer is in final testing with a small invited group of users, ahead of public release. All fifty-three tools now draw their own findings board inside the deliverable, and the HTA arrives as a tree you can search and click rather than as pages of numbered list.
• Bug fixes and user requests keep their place at the front of the queue. ErgoSphere is under active development, and the walk-throughs and dossier reads are still turning up things worth fixing. That is the point of running them.

Fifty-three tools. From here, the work is proving them.

Read the full v1.6.1.0 release notes →

A tool returns a number. The number goes into a report, the report goes to a client, and sometimes to a regulator or a court. Underneath it sits an assumption almost nobody checks: that the number the software produced is the number the published method would have produced.

Assessment methods live in lookup tables, thresholds and scoring rules, transcribed by hand out of papers and into code. A transcription error in one cell of one table crashes nothing. It throws no exception and fails no ordinary test. It quietly returns a slightly wrong answer, forever. The Dossier Project exists to audit that step.

What it is

Every method in ErgoSphere gets a verification and validation dossier: a controlled document that shows, with dates and evidence, how our implementation was checked against the source that defined it. Each dossier is built on the same fixed eight-component skeleton - provenance, implementation specification, canonical test cases, unit verification, regression suite, boundary and error testing, internal technical review, independent V&V - and every component carries one of four words: Complete, Partial, Not started, or Not applicable. Nothing else. A reader who gets no further than that board still leaves with an accurate picture.

The canonical test cases matter most. They are worked examples taken from the published source itself, encoded independently of the code they test, so a passing suite means the implementation agrees with the paper rather than with its own author.

Development is paused

Not slowed. Paused. No new tools are being started while this runs. It is the least glamorous work on the roadmap and it is the work your reports stand on, so it gets the whole build effort rather than the leftovers of one.

What it turns up is the ordinary kind of finding. REBA had its scoring tables checked cell by cell against the published source - not against our own notes, and not against the tests, which would only prove the code agrees with itself. 240 cells compared, all 240 matching. RULA had the same treatment the same day: 272 cells, all 272 matching. The comparison is recorded, so a reviewer can repeat it instead of taking our word for the result.

How to read one

Completed dossiers are released on request, under NDA. There is no public register and no scoreboard, deliberately: a tally invites you to judge the number rather than the method. Ask us about a method you rely on and we will tell you exactly what exists for it.

An unverified model is an opinion, however good it looks. Show the working.

Read how ErgoSphere is verified →

Version 1.6.0.0 shipped on 21 August 2026. Where 1.5 was about the methods, 1.6 is about the deliverable: what leaves your hands, who can open it, and whether it still says the same thing a year later.

The short version

• ErgoSphere Viewer ships as a free companion app. It opens the sealed .ergview package, shows the issued report page for page, renders the diagrams live, and lets a recipient highlight and comment the way they would in Word - while the issued deliverable stays byte identical forever.
• Deliverables, a fourth module, is where reports are marked ready, composed, issued with a manifest, superseded, reissued and reviewed.
• The HF Programme stream lands the assurance document set a client actually contracts for, including an HF Analysis Report with simultaneously valid audience variants, an HF User Requirements Register, and a bound figure token that makes a number quoted in prose a reference to the analysis rather than a typed digit.
• ErgoDelta arrives to count what actually changes between two states of a system: HTA nodes matched across versions, SHERPA errors compared mode by mode, task reduction and introduced errors reported separately.
• ErgoDesign gains a posable manikin, contact highlighting and a first-person Eye View with a MIL-STD-1472H visual field overlay; ErgoSense can now import an Xsens .mvn recording, so motion capture no longer has to be live.

There is a great deal more underneath - the registers scale to thousands of rows and gain a Role Register with task allocation and DIF analysis - and all of it is written up properly rather than summarised here.

Fifty-three tools. Thirty-seven methods you know, sixteen originals. One project file.

Read the full v1.6.0.0 release notes →

Human factors work has a delivery problem. The analyst builds a living thing - a task hierarchy you can walk, a bowtie you can trace, scores connected to the inputs that produced them - and then flattens all of it onto A4 because that is what the client can open. Most of what made the analysis valuable never survives the export.

The ErgoSphere Viewer fixes that. It is a free Windows app that opens .ergview files, the interactive deliverable exported from an ErgoSphere assessment. The person who commissioned the work gets the analysis itself: expand the hierarchy to any depth, follow a pathway from threat through barrier to consequence, see why a score came out the way it did, and export the locked report to PDF when a meeting wants paper.

Read-only, on purpose

The Viewer displays results. It does not edit them, recalculate them, or let anyone quietly produce a different answer. In defence, rail and process safety, that constraint is the point: a .ergview file is an assurance artefact, not a working copy. No account, no licence key, no telemetry, and nothing leaves the machine.

You paid for the analysis. You received a PDF. Not any more.

See the ErgoSphere Viewer →

Fifty was always going to be a line worth marking, and version 1.5.0.0 crossed it at speed: nine tools in one release, taking ErgoSphere from 43 to 52. Eight of them are canonical published methods, implemented under their own names, by the book.

What arrived

• FRAM, SNA and EAST open a new Systems shelf, with EAST composing task, social and information networks of one scenario over a single shared entity model.
• CDM brings the Critical Decision Method interview to a native, interactive incident timeline.
• GDTA and SAGAT arrive as a pair: one eliciting situation awareness requirements, the other measuring situation awareness against simulator ground truth.
• SWAT completes the workload shelf, and HE-HAZOP puts a configurable, team-run guideword walkthrough beside SHERPA.
• ErgoCompass, the ninth, is an ErgoSphere original: it helps you choose the right method, checks the foundational work has not been skipped, and records a justification defensible enough to survive an audit.

The same release turned ErgoBow into a full critical control management platform and reorganised the catalogue under a written naming rule, with the canonical systems methods - CWA, AcciMap, Link Analysis - taking their published names on the Systems shelf.

Fifty-two tools. Thirty-seven methods you know, fifteen originals. One project file.

Read the full v1.5.0.0 release notes →

ErgoSphere is built and supported from Brisbane, but Human Factors work happens everywhere. From today we are opening the doors to a small, accredited network of partners and resellers who can carry ErgoSphere into their own regions.

Outside Australia, the platform is delivered through these partners on private wholesale terms. We deliberately do not publish partner pricing here: every market is different, and we would rather have a direct conversation than post a number that does not fit yours.

Who we are looking for

If you advise on or implement Human Factors and ergonomics work in your region, and you want a serious, credible toolset to stand behind, this is an open invitation. We are accrediting a handful of partners, not building a crowd.

A small number of accredited partners. Private terms. Real conversations.

See partner and reseller details →

Version 1.3.0.0 is the biggest single step ErgoSphere has taken. The theme this time was the unglamorous, decisive work that turns a toolkit into a platform: compliance, reporting, and the engine room.

The headline is the new Compliance Wizards. The EHFA and HFIP wizards walk you through a human factors integration assessment and hand back a pre-filled completion report at the end, so the evidence is assembled as you go rather than reconstructed the night before a gate review.

What landed

• Word export everywhere. Every method tool now produces a native Word report. The old PDF path has been retired.
• A new 3D engine. ErgoDesign and ErgoGlare were rebuilt on an AB4D and SkiaSharp rendering stack for faster, cleaner viewports.
• An IWS workload tool and an Industry Profile Lens that curates the toolkit to your sector.
• ErgoBow and ErgoSense rebuilds, redesigned Project Management and Compliance modules, and a space-saving unified tool header.
• A new Classic theme, and the first automated UI tests running quietly behind the scenes.

Read the full v1.3.0.0 release notes →

Students should learn on the tools they will actually use in the field, not a stripped-back teaching version. So ErgoSphere is now free for universities and training providers that embed it into accredited Human Factors coursework.

The instructor applies once, and licences are issued for the whole cohort, renewing each teaching period. Students get the full platform: every method and every module, the same environment they will meet in practice.

How it works

An instructor or course coordinator gets in touch, we confirm the course and the cohort, and the licences are issued. There is no catch and no cost. The aim is simply to put the discipline's real toolset into the hands of the people learning it.

Students learn on the same toolset they will use in practice. Free, for the whole cohort.

See the education licence details →

Some releases add tools. This one made the existing tools honest. Version 1.2.2.0 was a method-integrity pass, and most of it lives below the waterline where only the results give it away.

THERP was rebuilt onto a canonical NUREG/CR-1278 event-tree engine, replacing a simplified multiplier model with the real thing. CREAM was reworked around Hollnagel's two-axis control-mode model. If you assess human reliability for a living, these are the details that decide whether your numbers survive a review.

If a tool is going to put a number in front of a regulator, the method behind it has to be exactly right.

The same release introduced a project-wide Registers module for hazards, tasks, issues and documents, restructured the SCTA editor for analyst clarity, and added a periodic-review framework to Compliance.

Read the full v1.2.2.0 release notes →

Every so often a release lands that changes the shape of the product. Version 1.2.0.0 was that release: eight new tools in a single drop.

ErgoGlare brought Radiance-backed glare assessment. ErgoBow added bowtie barrier mapping for major hazards. SCTA, ErgoEnsemble and ErgoLink rounded out the analysis suite, while HEART+ and SHERPA+ extended two reliability classics. The full HSE manual-handling trio, ART, RAPP and MAC, arrived alongside them.

Underneath, every diagram tool was moved onto a single unified Cytoscape canvas, the physical results panels were rebuilt, and the encryption layer became lock-aware. A great deal changed, all at once, on purpose.

Read the full v1.2.0.0 release notes →

Version 1.1.0.0 was the release where ErgoSphere stopped being a handful of calculators and started to feel like a suite. Six new tools arrived together: URRA, uFMEA, ErgoTrace, ErgoStrata, SCTA and ErgoLoop.

ErgoDesign entered beta, ErgoLens was rebuilt, and the multi-assessment experience was redesigned around real project workflows. The whole application also learned to speak five languages, opening it up well beyond its first users.

It was, more than anything, a statement of intent about how broad the platform was going to become.

Read the full v1.1.0.0 release notes →

For decades, serious Human Factors tooling has been priced for procurement departments, not for the people who actually do the work. ErgoSphere was built to close that gap, and the Founding Cohort is how the first fifty practitioners get in at the ground floor.

The deal is deliberately simple. You take a seat at half the list price, locked in for two years. In return you write us one short case study a year, let us use your name and logo, and lend the occasional reference call and a little design-partner input. That is the whole trade.

Built for the practitioner, not their procurement department. That is the whole pitch.

The cohort is capped at fifty seats and offered to Australian organisations first. Once it is full it closes, and founding pricing reverts to the standard rate from year three.

How to apply

Send us a line about the work you do and how you would put ErgoSphere to use. We read every application personally.

See the founding pricing in full →

Before a tool can carry real client work, it has to be safe to lean on. Version 1.0.30.0 was the quiet, important release that earned that trust.

It brought project encryption, auto-save and recovery, and in-app bug reporting so issues could be raised without leaving the app. Company branding arrived for PDF exports, the library was redesigned, the HTA page got a facelift, and a long list of stability fixes went in behind them.

None of it makes a flashy screenshot. All of it is the reason practitioners felt comfortable putting their first real assessments into ErgoSphere.

Read the full v1.0.30.0 release notes →

Every platform has a day one. For ErgoSphere it was the fourth of March 2026, when version 1.0.29.0 became the first build to leave internal development and reach a small group of founding partners.

It was a pilot in the truest sense: enough to be genuinely useful, rough in the places that would be smoothed over the months that followed. What mattered was that it was real, in real hands, doing real work.

The discipline was always mandatory. The toolkit was finally in the room.

Everything in the entries above grew from this one. It is worth remembering where it started.

See the original pilot notes →