The Story So Far

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 →