Over the last thirty years, bowties have been widely adopted in almost all high hazard industries. In essence, the method is still the same as when Shell first facilitated extensive research and developed an initial set of rules and guidelines in the early nineties. However, the applications of the bowtie method and barrier management in [...]
Gathering risk scenarios & incident information, and updating them can be an intense job, especially if the available data is scattered over multiple files and multiple formats. Often clients have the need to merge parts of data from different sources and tend to ask for help to do this in a decent manner. Luckily the [...]
Gathering risk scenarios & incident information, and updating them can be an intense job, especially if the available data is scattered over multiple files and multiple formats. Often clients have the need to merge parts of data from different sources and tend to ask for help to do this in a decent manner. Luckily the [...]
The holes in James Reason’s Swiss cheese model can be represented through escalation factors in the bowtie method. Although, theoretically, that may be true. Practically, it might be of more added value if they are considered to be activities that are part of your safety management system. This blog will show you how to make [...]
Gathering risk scenarios & incident information, and updating them can be an intense job, especially if the available data is scattered over multiple files and multiple formats. Often clients have the need to merge parts of data from different sources and tend to ask for help to do this in a decent manner. Luckily the [...]
Guest blog by Emily Harbottle from HarbottleHughes I was asked the other day what advantage a 5x5 risk matrix has over a 4x5 and it started me thinking. A risk matrix is meant to help categorize, prioritize and compare risks, so what difference do 5 or 4 rows or columns really make? I assumed it [...]
A common mistake for beginning bowtie users is to describe threats as failed barriers. For example: “Failure of X”, ‘Lack of Y” or “Absence of Z” etc. Our quick and dirty advice is usually to just rephrase the threat in a positive manner so that it fits the description of a barrier. “Failure of ABS” becomes [...]
One of the guidelines we use when creating bowties is to describe the consequences as events, rather than damage. However, we see that many bowtie-creators struggle with the description of a consequence. In this blog, we explain how to describe consequences in the bowtie. Describing your consequences A common approach is that the bowtie-creator defines [...]
Many companies want to extend the BowTieXP functionality to integrate with their (computerized) Maintenance Management System, so they can display the (real-time) availability of their hardware barriers. Technical barriers usually consist of systems that are made up of multiple parts. By displaying the online/offline status of hardware parts and (sub)systems, decisions can be made in [...]
Loss of containment could lead to fire. Having multiple barriers or controls between those events could give the impression that the operation is well-protected. But what if your barriers are dependent on each other? Many organizations struggle with the level of detail when defining barriers in bowtie risk modeling. For example: should barriers be fully [...]
