Effective Barrier Risk Management in Process Safety Utilizing the Bow Tie Methodology

Abstract

The outcome of the Technological Risk Assessment is the major risk register that contains all the major incident scenarios including the top ten scenarios and their corresponding barriers towards prevention, control & mitigation of potential consequences. The expected result of an effective Barrier Risk Management is to reduce and or minimize the possibility of a major process safety incident happening due to weaknesses developed in these barriers and ensuring that all the necessary mitigation and mechanisms are robust enough and in place should an incident happen. Are our Barrier risk assessment for process safety accidents properly assessed with adequate barriers defined to prevent the occurrence of major incidents? This means that, the assurance of Process Safety is defined on the basics that all our Safety Critical Barriers (SCBs) are clearly understood, by knowing what our critical controls are, assessing and monitoring their health status in our day-to-day operations towards ensuring that they are functionally available on demand to prevent, mitigate and control process safety incidents. This Paper in detail, will describe the operationalization of the Bow Tie Barrier Risk management, beginning with the Identification of Safety Critical Barriers for operating plants in an integrated approach, defining potential threats from major accident scenarios, its effects and their barriers in one holistic view with the BowTie, act as a line of sight for individual barrier performance management, action plans and improvement. Converting the BowTie from a static to a dynamic barrier management tool by identifying any missing or possible degraded barriers and manage corrective actions implementation, plug in other operational elements such as incidents, audits, inspections, change management and safety and inspections information to create relationship between the barriers and any operational disturbances.