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The challenge

Understand and communicate complex risk scenarios

If you’ve ever created risk assessments in Excel and then tried to explain them to your ‘non-risk-related’ colleagues, you know you’ve set yourself up for a challenge. Although Excel can be convenient to create a risk register that lists your risks, threats, consequences, barriers and such, it’s hard to see the bigger picture of how these elements relate to one another, and how you’re reducing risk.

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The solution

A picture says more than a thousand words

Bowtie is a diagram that visualizes the risk you’re dealing with in just one, easy to understand picture. The diagram is shaped like a bow-tie, creating a clear differentiation between proactive and reactive risk management. The power of bowtie is that it shows you a summary of scenarios in a single picture. It provides a simple, visual explanation of risk that would be much more difficult to explain otherwise.

Don’t take our word for it…

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How does it work?

Risk registers – the traditional way

Can you answer the following questions based on the image on the left?

  • Which of the barriers are preventive (proactive)?
  • Which of the barriers are reactive (recovery and mitigating)?
  • Do you have enough barriers to prevent events from happening and are they effective?
  • What if the engineering manager is fatigued?
visual risk assessments
visual risk assessments

Risk registers – the bowtie way

Have a look at the image on the right and answer the questions again. What becomes clear in this picture?

  • Are there enough proactive barriers?
  • Is every threat or consequence covered by multiple barriers?
  • What is the effectiveness of these barriers (color of the barrier)?
  • What if the Engineering Manager is fatigued?

Convert your risk register into a visual risk picture

Most companies already have a risk register in place, often in Excel sheets. Converting that information into bowtie diagrams helps to understand dependencies between barriers and to spot weaknesses in lines of defense.

Learn how that works or how to start a bowtie from scratch?

Request a demo
Request a Demo
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Learn how that works or how to start a bowtie from scratch?

Request a Demo
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Other Challenges

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Feel free to call us with any questions you might have. Our enthusiastic support team is here to help you choose the solution best suited to your needs.

Call us now at +31 (0)70 362 6126 (09:00-17:00CET) or visit the Support section on our website.

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