Barrier management and bow ties course

The aim of this two-days course is to provide an awareness of the bow tie tool including rules for drawing effective, good quality bow ties and to provide practitioner training for those who will be using and applying the tool as part of the risk and barrier/controls management in their organization.

Bow ties are an excellent risk management tool which provide a pictorial representation of how the risk of events and uncertainties in operations and business activities are managed. They tell the story from potential causes/threats which lead to the event/uncertainty through to the potential consequences which could result, along with the barrier* you have in place to prevent or mitigate the risk. 

Bow ties allow barriers to be clearly defined and, hence form the basis for their management. They also allow the effectiveness, condition and criticality (plus other information) to be presented as part of the story they tell. In short, the use of bow ties can facilitate informed barrier management, barrier optimization and decisions making. 

As part of your risk and barrier management, it is important that bow ties are drawn well so that they enable effective barrier management. The aim of this course is to provide an awareness of the bow tie tool including rules for drawing effective, good quality bow ties (first half day) and to provide practitioner training for those who will be using and applying the tool as part of the risk and barrier/controls management in their organization.

Course description

The barrier management and bow tie course provides:

• An overview and basic knowledge of bow ties 
• Key rules to follow to draw effective bow ties 
• How to develop effective bow ties, access barrier conditions, review bow ties and assess bow ties to assure their quality
• How organizations use bow ties as part of effective risk management 
• Open discussion on the theory and logic for quality bow ties and includes practical exercises so that attendees can gain experience using the tool.

Learning objectives

The objectives of this course are to offer course participants the following: 

• A basic understanding of bow tie theory and principles (including quality rules) plus best practices for including human factors in bow ties
• How to build up the information on barriers/controls in a bow tie to enable good barrier/control management 
• How to analyse bow ties and bow ties to better manage risks
• How to develop and/or present information to support good barrier management information, e.g. barrier condition, barrier KPIs and barrier audits. 

The course is aligned to best practice as described in the book; ‘Bow ties in risk management – a concept book for process safety’ published by the Centre for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) and the Energy Institute (EI), and to which DNV was the lead author.

Target audience

Risk managers, risk coordinators, process safety managers and practitioners, HSE engineers/advisors, safety leaders, line managers, and others involved in the management of risk and barriers/controls.

This course is applicable to a wide range of industries such as oil and gas, pipelines, food, aviation, health care and others.