The challenge
How can you understand the impact of human behavior on your mission critical processes and how can you make sure that the right people are provided with the right information? Awareness, availability and relevance of the right information in the right context are key in making sure that your safety barriers are managed in the right way.
The solution
The bowtie method allows you to understand the relation and effect of human factors. Human factors are often part of the performance or failure modes of barriers. Failure modes are represented as escalation factors in the bowtie diagram. If you understand the failure modes, then you know what kind of activities a company needs to undertake to prevent these failure modes from actually compromising the barriers. This can be training, awareness campaigns, or it can go as far as organization development and culture transformation.
Since human factors are such an integral part of risk management, an organization needs to fully understand the impact that they have on risks. Every barrier is supported by the human element, whether it is a safety valve that needs to be maintained or an activity that requires certain competencies and or training.
The bowtie diagram makes it very clear how the human element affects barrier performance. When working with the ‘barrier types’ functionality, you can clearly distinguish ‘human barriers’ from ‘hardware barriers’. Supporting activities like training and competency development can be monitored and made visual on the barriers.
In the planning of operations, it is possible to instantly understand how reliable critical barriers and controls are. Because of the visual aspect, the bowtie is often used in toolbox meetings before an operational activity commences.
Integrated with HR management
Since people are accountable for barriers and related activities, the bowtie can be used in conjunction with HR management. The barriers and controls in the barrier model can be linked to required certificates, training courses, e-learning modules and introduction training.
The features used for this solution:
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