barriers Use criticality to find important barriers Which risk barriers are the most important? This question can be answered with barrier criticality. In this article we discuss why & how to approach barrier criticality as well as some challenges.
barriers Practical applications of bowtie It can be a challenge to know what to use bowties for. In this webinar we show different practical applications of bowties. From risk communication to barrier monitoring and decision support.
incidents 5 reasons why analysing barrier failures is better than 5-why I hope you'll forgive me, but I don't really like 5-why. It's a decent methodology, but I think there are better options. Instead, we can use barrier-based incident analysis methods. Why is this better? Well, here are 5 reasons why I think analysing barrier failures is better than 5-why.
bowtie Why threats in bowties don't always lead to all consequences In theory all threats in a bowtie diagram can cause the top event, and the top event can cause all consequences. But sometimes a threat can't lead to all consequences. Why is that and is it a problem?
barriers The barrier maturity model Many organisations have adopted the idea of barrier management in safety. Many are also searching for ways to take a next step. With the barrier maturity model you can determine where your organisation currently is and see which steps can be taken to mature to a higher level of barrier management.
barriers An alternative to the hierarchy of control The hierarchy of control is often used as a brainstorming tool to come up with effective controls (aka, barriers). It's good because it favours proactive interventions like eliminating a source of fuel over reactive interventions like putting out a fire. However sometimes it is misused as a formal classification tool.
incidents Barrier states A barrier can have different states in an incident, mostly divided into four types: 1) Missing barriers 2) Failed barriers 3) Inadequate barriers and 4) Effective barriers. There are considerable differences in interpretation of these states, and when one or the other should be used. Here I'd like to give
incidents 30 years after Bhopal In the media today you can read various accounts on Bhopal, exactly 30 years after the disaster. This video makes you think about how organisations often fail to deal with long term consequences of accidents. Often they already struggle to effectively implement corrective measures directly after an incident analysis is
incidents Human error is like gravity There are still incidents that get summarised to 'it was caused by human error.' This isn't useful. It'll be difficult to find an incident that doesn't include human error somehow. It's problematic because talking about the human condition as a whole is unlikely to get fixed anytime soon. Let
rca The root cause fallacy After an incident has occurred, most investigations will try to find the root cause on a system or management level. To find the underlying reasons for an incident, instead of focusing on the more superficial ones. An important reason for doing this is the assumption that by fixing a single
risk assessment Your bowtie is too generic If I could give one piece of advice to a novice bowtie analyst, it would be to include more specific information. Most risk assessments are too generic at first. This is true not just for bowties. It happens in FMEA, HAZID and other methods as well. It's important to get