Overview 

Creating a bowtie is the first step in building an analysis in BowTie Pro. A bowtie represents a risk scenario and forms the foundation for everything that follows — the threats that could trigger it, the consequences that could result, and the controls that manage both. Getting this first step right sets your whole analysis up on solid ground, so it’s worth taking a moment over the details.

This guide walks you through the process from start to finish.

Steps to Create a New bowtie

1. Go to the Hazards Section 

2. Click “New Bowtie”

Tip: Choosing New Hazard from within the right location group saves a step — the hazard is automatically filed under that location, though you can still change it on the next screen.

Hazard Details Fields Explained

On the Hazard Details screen, you’ll complete the following fields. The screenshot at the end of this section shows how they all sit together.

3. Select Location

This determines where the hazard will be grouped in your lists and reports.

4. Enter Reference

A clear reference makes the hazard easy to identify in lists, filters, and reports later.

Tip: A consistent reference scheme pays off as your analysis grows. A simple prefix system — H for hazard, followed by a number — keeps large registers easy to scan.

5. Enter Hazard

This defines the source of risk — the activity, object, or condition you’re analysing.

6. Define Top Event

The top event represents the exact point at which control over the hazard is lost — the centre of your BowTie, from which threats and consequences branch out.

7. Select Type

The Hazard Type helps classify the bowtie by its severity or category. Each Hazard Type has a different colour on the Hazard tree and center of the bowtie.

8. Add Hazard Remarks (Optional)

This is a useful place to record assumptions, scope notes, or anything a future reviewer should know.

9. Set Next Review Date (Optional)

Setting a review date will ensure the bowtie is flagged up for review when its Review date is reached. This helps keep the analysis current by scheduling periodic checks and preventing the bowtie from becoming out of date.

10. Categories (Optional)

These classifications help you filter and report on hazards across your analysis.

Final Step: Save the Hazard

Once all required fields are filled:

Fields outlined in red on the Hazard Details screen are required — if Save doesn’t complete, check that each of these has been filled in.

Once the Save button is clicked BowTie Pro will next display the bowtie diagram from which the next steps can be performed.

What’s Next?

Creating a hazard is a straightforward process, but it lays the foundation for your entire risk analysis. With the hazard and its top event in place, you can move on to define the threats that could lead to it, the consequences that could follow, and the controls that prevent and mitigate them — completing the full BowTie model.

Welcome to BowTie Pro Cloud Edition — a web-based risk management platform designed to help organizations visualize, analyze, and manage operational risks using the BowTie methodology.

BowTie Pro provides an intuitive way to:

The platform combines visual risk assessment with operational workflows, making it easier for teams to understand and manage complex risks across the organization.

What is the BowTie Methodology?

The BowTie methodology is a visual risk assessment approach that displays:

This structure helps organizations clearly understand how risks are controlled and where weaknesses may exist.

Key Features of BowTie Pro Cloud Edition

BowTie Pro Cloud Edition includes a wide range of risk management capabilities, including:

Feature Description
BowTie Diagrams Visualize threats, consequences, and controls in an easy-to-understand format.
Hazard Management Organize hazards by cases and operational locations.
Risk Registers Generate centralized risk and hazard registers.
LOPA Analysis Perform Layers of Protection Analysis for additional risk evaluation.
Incident Management Record and investigate incidents directly within the platform.
Deficiency Management Track deficiencies, actions, and corrective measures.
Reporting & Dashboards Generate reports and visualize operational risk metrics.
Administration Controls Configure system settings, classifications, and workflows.

BowTie Pro Cloud Edition allows multiple users to collaborate through a centralized cloud database, improving visibility and consistency across the organization.

Benefits of Using BowTie Pro Cloud Edition

Organizations use BowTie Pro to:

The cloud-based approach also enables easier collaboration and centralized access to risk information across departments and locations.

Who Uses BowTie Pro?

BowTie Pro is used by:

The platform is designed for both technical specialists and non-specialist users through its visual and easy-to-understand risk modeling approach.

What You Will Learn in This Knowledge Base

This knowledge base will help you learn how to:

BowTie Pro Cloud Edition provides organizations with a powerful and visual approach to operational risk management. By combining BowTie analysis, incident management, action tracking, and reporting capabilities into a centralized platform, organizations can improve risk communication, strengthen operational controls, and support continuous safety improvement.

In simple terms, there are two main types of barrier:

  1. Engineered barriers – physical equipment or technical systems designed to reduce or control risk.
  2. Human barriers – actions carried out by people to reduce, control or respond to risk.

Both types of barrier can be further categorised and the methods used to assess their effectiveness will depend on their function and how they perform their safety role.

Engineered Brarriers   

Engineered barriers are physical or technical measures designed to prevent, control or mitigate hazardous events. They are generally divided into two categories:

Passive barriers

Passive barriers are physical features that continuously keep a hazard under control without requiring any action or activation. Examples include:

Active barriers

Active barriers require a change in process conditions or another defined trigger before performing their intended safety function. They are designed to respond automatically to hazardous conditions to prevent an incident from occurring or to reduce its consequences if one does occur. Examples include:

To remain effective, all engineered barriers should be properly specified, designed, installed, operated, inspected and maintained throughout their lifecycle. Appropriate hazard and safety studies should also be undertaken to define the Performance Standards for each safety critical barrier, ensuring each barrier performs its intended safety function when required.

Although engineered barriers are generally considered more reliable because they do not rely on immediate human intervention during operation, they are only effective when they are correctly managed and maintained.

It is also important to recognise the role people play in the lifecycle of engineered barriers. Human factors should be considered during their design, installation, operation and maintenance. Where people are responsible for inspecting, testing or maintaining an engineered barrier, these activities should be treated as safety critical and assessed using appropriate human factors techniques.

Human Barriers

Human barriers rely on people carrying out actions to prevent, control or respond to hazardous situations. These are generally grouped into two categories:

While there is no absolute distinction between the two, a task will normally have the following characteristics:

Human barriers that do not fit these characteristics are generally considered to be activities, although there can be some overlap. Common examples include:

BowTie Pro is able to display, highlight and clearly indicate all four types of barriers

Example BowTie:

In these examples the First row is the type, the second row is the Accountable person is the and the third row is the  responsible person.

Safety Critical Tasks & Decuments 

Any barrier identified on a BowTie diagram should be regarded as safety critical.

A barrier may be supported by a single safety critical task or by several critical activities. Equally, a single critical activity may support multiple barriers across different major hazards. BowTie Pro supports all these relationships.

Supporting documents, such as maintenance procedures, operating instructions or inspection checklists, may also be linked to a barrier. These documents help ensure that safety critical activities are carried out consistently and effectively.

When defining a safety critical task, the following minimum information should be recorded:

Identify the role responsible for completing the task. Wherever possible, responsibilities should be assigned at a level that can be readily verified by a supervisor.

Provide a brief description of the task and explain how the person knows what actions are required.

Describe what triggers the task and how the person knows when it should be completed.

Identify the evidence, checks or verification that demonstrate the task has been carried out correctly and the barrier remains effective.

Barrier Ownership

Every safety-critical barrier should have a clearly identified owner who is accountable for ensuring the barrier remains effective throughout its lifecycle. The owner is responsible for ensuring appropriate performance standards are defined, inspections and maintenance are completed, deficiencies are addressed, and supporting documentation remains current. Although individual safety-critical tasks may be delegated, accountability for the barrier’s ongoing performance remains with the designated owner.

Document Management in BowTies

Effective document management is essential to maintaining the integrity of safety-critical barriers throughout their lifecycle. Within a BowTie, documents provide the evidence that barriers have been correctly designed, implemented, operated and maintained in accordance with their defined Performance Standards. They also ensure that information is current, controlled and readily available to those responsible for managing or performing safety-critical activities. Well-managed documentation supports assurance, facilitates audits and demonstrates that barriers remain capable of performing their intended safety function.

Engineering Barrier Documents

Engineering barriers should be supported by controlled documentation that defines how they are designed, operated, inspected, tested and maintained. Typical documents include

These documents provide objective evidence that engineering barriers continue to meet their required performance and enable any deterioration or deficiencies to be identified and addressed before barrier integrity is compromised.

Human Factor Documents

Human dependent barriers rely on clear, accurate and accessible documentation to ensure safety-critical tasks are performed consistently and effectively. Typical documents include

These documents support human performance by defining responsibilities, standardising working practices and reducing the potential for error. Regular review and revision ensure that documentation reflects changes to operations, lessons learned from incidents and improvements identified through audits or risk assessments, helping to maintain the effectiveness of human-dependent barriers over time.

BowTie Pro provides several ways to create a BowTie. You can quickly generate a starting framework using our AI-powered models, import and industry example file or recreate information you may have from existing BowTies in an Excel or Visio file.  Regardless of how you begin, it is important to remember that a BowTie is typically an evolution of your existing risk management information rather than something created entirely from scratch.

A BowTie analysis rarely starts with new data collection. Instead, it brings together information that already exists within an organisation into a single visual model of risk. The most effective BowTies are evidence-based, reflecting how work is actually performed and are validated by people with the appropriate knowledge and experience rather than being built on assumptions.

Common sources of data may include information you may already have eg

These sources provide the evidence needed to identify hazards, threats, consequences and the controls that are already in place.

Developing the Risk Model

Experience has shown that the most effective way to develop a BowTie is through a facilitated workshop involving people who understand the activity or process being assessed. Bringing together individuals with different knowledge and responsibilities helps ensure the BowTie accurately represents how risks are managed in practice. 

A collaborative approach offers several benefits:

The facilitator’s role is to guide the discussion and translate the group’s knowledge into a clear, consistent and easy-to-understand BowTie model.

A practical workflow

A typical BowTie development process follows these steps:

No single document contains all the information required to build an effective BowTie. Combining existing documentation with the knowledge of subject matter experts through a structured workshop produces a more accurate, practical and valuable risk model.

This quick start guide introduces the basic workflow for getting started with BowTie Pro Cloud Edition.

By following these steps, new users can quickly learn how to:

Step 1 — Log In to BowTie Pro

Open the BowTie Pro Cloud Edition login page and sign in using your assigned credentials.

After logging in, users are typically redirected to the:

depending on permissions and system configuration.

Step 2 — Review the Dashboard

The dashboard provides a centralized overview of:

Reviewing the dashboard helps users understand current operational risk status and outstanding activities.

Step 3 — Understand Cases and Locations

BowTie Pro organizes operational data using:

Cases help separate operational environments, while locations organize hazards within each case.

Before creating risk assessments, users should understand how their organization structures operational data.

Step 4 — Create or Review Hazards

Hazards form the foundation of BowTie analysis.

Users can:

Hazards are later used for:

Step 5 — Build BowTie Diagrams

BowTie diagrams visually represent:

These diagrams help teams understand how operational risks are controlled.

Users can:

Step 6 — Perform LOPA Assessments

The LOPA module helps organizations evaluate:

LOPA assessments support deeper operational risk analysis and help evaluate safeguard effectiveness.

Step 7 — Track Actions and Deficiencies

BowTie Pro allows users to create and monitor corrective actions.

Users can:

This helps organizations improve accountability and operational follow-up.

Step 8 — Monitor Incidents

The incident management module helps organizations:

This supports operational learning and continuous improvement.

Step 9 — Use Dashboards and Reports

Dashboards and analytics provide visibility into:

Management teams can use this information to improve oversight and decision-making.

Best Practices for New Users

When getting started with BowTie Pro:

Taking a structured approach helps users become familiar with the platform more efficiently.

BowTie Pro Cloud Edition combines BowTie analysis, LOPA assessments, incident management, action tracking, and dashboards into a centralized operational risk management platform.

By understanding the basic workflow and navigation structure, new users can quickly begin managing hazards, tracking risks, and improving operational safety processes.

Human factors play a critical role in BowTie risk analysis because they influence the effectiveness of both preventive and recovery controls. In a BowTie diagram, threats can lead to a hazardous event if controls fail and many of these controls rely on human actions, decisions or behaviours. Factors such as competence, communication, workload, fatigue, situational awareness and adherence to procedures can determine whether a control performs as intended. Identifying these human influences help organisations better understand where failures are most likely to occur.

When incorporating human factors into a BowTie analysis, it is important to assess the reliability of human-dependent controls and identify the conditions that could reduce their effectiveness. Performance influencing factors such as inadequate training, poor equipment design, time pressure, distractions and unclear responsibilities can weaken critical barriers. Identifying these factors allows organisations to introduce additional controls, improve barrier reliability and reduce the likelihood of human error compromising risk controls.

People as Safety Barriers   

Human Factor Specialist Ronald W. McLeod argues that human factors strengthen BowTie analysis barriers by focusing on the conditions that enable people to perform safety critical tasks successfully, rather than simply attempting to eliminate human error. He emphasises that people are an integral part of many preventive and recovery barriers and that barrier effectiveness depends on designing work systems that support reliable human performance.

Rather than viewing people as the primary source of risk, McLeod recognises that well-designed organisational systems enable individuals to adapt, make informed decisions and respond effectively to changing operational conditions. This perspective strengthens barrier performance, improves organisational resilience and supports more effective management of major accident hazards.

By considering factors such as competence, procedures, equipment design and the working environment, organisations can improve the quality and dependability of human-dependent barriers.

Managing Human Performance

Human performance is inherently variable. People become fatigued, take breaks, experience distractions and may sometimes make decisions that appear incorrect but are reasonable given the information, pressures or organisational influences present at the time. These characteristics reinforce the need to design systems that support reliable performance rather than relying solely on individual behaviour.

An example is the Energy Institute whose guidance emphasises that effective management of human factors is essential for preventing major accidents, as people interact continuously with equipment, procedures and management systems. Rather than focusing solely on individual behaviour, the Energy Institute promotes a systems approach that considers how work is designed, organised and managed to support reliable human performance.

According to the Energy Institute, integrating human factors into risk management and barrier-based approaches such as BowTie analysis helps ensure that critical controls remain effective throughout their lifecycle. This includes addressing performance influencing factors such as competence, communication, workload, fatigue, supervision, shift patterns and organisational culture. By identifying and managing these influences, organisations can strengthen both preventive and recovery barriers, improve operational resilience and reduce the likelihood of human error contributing to major accident hazards.

Supporting Human Factors with BowTie Pro

BowTie Pro supports the practical implementation of human factors by allowing organisations to explicitly identify human-dependent barriers and link them to accountable roles, competencies and procedures. This enables organisations to:

Integrating human factors into BowTie analysis enables organisations to move beyond viewing people solely as a source of error and instead recognise them as essential contributors to effective risk management. By understanding both the strengths and limitations of human performance, organisations can design stronger barriers, improve operational resilience and maintain more effective control of major accident hazards. When supported by BowTie Pro, these principles can be embedded into everyday barrier management, providing greater confidence that human-dependent controls remain effective throughout their lifecycle.

HAZIDs and HAZOPs  

Hazard identification (HAZID), Hazard and Operability Studies (HAZOP) and BowTie analysis are complementary risk management techniques that support different stages of the risk assessment process.   While each technique serves a different purpose, together they provide a structured approach to understanding hazards, evaluating controls and managing major accident risks throughout the asset lifecycle.

HAZID 

A HAZID is typically performed early in the lifecycle of a project or activity to identify potential hazards, hazardous events and areas of concern. It provides a broad understanding of the risks that need further investigation and helps determine where more detailed analysis is required. HAZIDs are often used during concept design, project planning, or when introducing significant operational changes.

The output from a HAZID is typically a structured list of hazards, hazardous events and recommendations that define the scope for more detailed assessment.

HAZOP 

A HAZOP provides the next level of analysis by systematically examining a process or activity using structured guide words to identify deviations from the intended operation, their possible causes and their potential consequences. The HAZOP study records each deviation in detail, identifies existing safeguards and recommends actions to reduce risk where necessary. HAZOPs are particularly valuable because they provide a comprehensive and traceable record of the assessment, ensuring that potential failures have been considered methodically by a multi-disciplinary team.

Many of the safeguards identified during a HAZOP subsequently become preventive or recovery barriers within a BowTie.

BowTie Analysis

BowTie analysis builds upon the information generated during HAZIDs and HAZOPs by presenting the risk in a clear and visual format. Unlike HAZIDs and HAZOPs, which primarily record findings in a dull tabular form, BowTie analysis presents the relationships between hazards, threats, the top event, consequences and the preventive and recovery barriers that control the risk within a single visual model. This visual approach makes complex risk information easier to understand and communicate to a wider audience, including operational personnel, managers, and stakeholders who may not have participated in the original assessment. In practice, the hazards and recommendations identified during a HAZOP often form the basis of the barriers represented within the Bowtie diagram, providing a direct link between the detailed analysis and the ongoing management of critical controls.

Bring everything together with BowTie Pro

BowTie Pro brings these techniques together by enabling organisations to develop, manage and maintain BowTie diagrams to rapidly create an initial BowTie framework by allowing import of information captured during HAZIDs, HAZOPs and other risk assessments which can then be refined and validated through reviews by subject matter experts or facilitated workshops.

BowTie Pro supports this process by:

Once imported, the information can be reviewed and validated to ensure that threats, consequences, barriers and responsibilities accurately reflect the operation being assessed. This collaborative review ensures that the BowTie represents current operational knowledge while maintaining alignment with the original HAZID and HAZOP studies.

By the use of BowTie diagrams, BowTie Pro provides an organisation with a consistent, evidence-based approach to managing critical risks. It improves communication between disciplines, supports the ownership and assurance of critical barriers, enables action tracking and promotes the continual improvement of barrier performance throughout the asset lifecycle.

Introduction   

BowTie is a barrier-based approach to managing risk. Its purpose is straightforward: to help you spot a risk, judge how serious it is, and put the right controls in place to keep it under control. What sets it apart is the diagram at its heart — a single picture that lays out how a risk might unfold and what stands in the way of it doing harm. That clarity is why organisations in so many sectors reach for it when they need to talk about safety and act on it.

This guide walks you through:   

Working through the parts of a BowTie is a practical way to surface your safety priorities and see where risk can be reduced. You don’t strictly need software to do it — but BowTie Pro™ makes the models far easier to build, revise, and share, exporting them in formats that suit everyone from the boardroom to the shop floor.

The BowTie method comes into its own in workshops. Gathering a team around a single diagram lets people challenge the risks, check that the barriers really exist, and show plainly how safety measures are put into practice and kept up.

In short: A BowTie turns a complex risk analysis into one readable picture — causes on the left, consequences on the right, and the barriers that sit between them.

How Does BowTie Work? 

Every BowTie is built from a handful of building blocks that, together, tell the full story of a risk. Two of them sit at the centre:

From that centre point, the diagram fans out in two directions:

Barriers (or controls) are then placed to keep those risks in check, and they fall into two camps:

Left side — Prevention Right side — Recovery / Mitigation
Measures that remove a threat or stop it short of triggering the top event. Measures that lessen how likely or how severe a consequence is once the top event has occurred.

The model goes a step further by weighing up escalation factors — the conditions that can wear down or defeat a barrier. Where these exist, you can assign extra controls to keep them managed.

You can also layer in details such as how effective or how critical each barrier is, which lets a BowTie feed neatly into a wider Safety Management System (SMS).

A worked example brings it to life. The hazard is a caged tiger; the top event is the tiger escaping. On the left, threats such as a keeper leaving the gate open pass through prevention barriers like a self-closing gate and an alarm. On the right, consequences such as harm to the public or loss of the animal are managed by recovery barriers including a dart gun, a search plan, and insurance.

What Does a BowTie Show?

At its core, BowTie models make visible the links between hazards, threats, controls, and consequences. Instead of a list of risks buried in a report, you get a structured view of exactly how your barriers stop incidents and soften their fallout.

A well-built BowTie helps you to:

Because it is so flexible, the same model serves many purposes — proactive risk assessment, safety case work, training, incident analysis, and demonstrating compliance to a regulator.

Tip: A BowTie is only as honest as the barriers you can actually evidence. If a control can’t be pointed to in practice, treat it as a gap, not a comfort.

BowTie Pro: Connecting LOPA, Incidents, and Action Tracking

Within BowTie methodology, a BowTie diagram rarely works in isolation. In practice, it sits at the centre of a wider risk picture, tying together several related activities:

Bringing these strands around a single diagram means your BowTie stops being a static drawing and becomes a living part of how the organisation learns and improves.

The BowTie diagram at the heart of the wider risk cycle, connecting Action Tracking, Incidents, and LOPA.

Understanding Escalation Factors

One of the model’s real strengths is that it refuses to take barriers at face value. An escalation factor is a condition that raises risk by defeating a control or blunting its effectiveness. Rather than assuming a barrier will always hold, the BowTie prompts you to ask how it could fail — and then to add controls that keep that weakness in check.

Traps and tips

Escalation factor controls are the answer to these weaknesses. They manage the conditions that undermine other barriers, keeping your prevention and recovery measures dependable when it counts.

Where Did BowTie and BowTie Methodology Come From?

The method grew out of a simplified pairing of two established techniques: fault tree analysis and event tree analysis.

It was the oil and gas industry, during the 1990s, that formalised the approach and expanded its practical use as a way to get to grips with major hazards. From there it spread widely, and today you’ll find it applied across defence, healthcare, finance, mining, and aviation.

A Barrier-Based Approach to Risk

Many in the safety world already know Professor James Reason’s “Swiss cheese” model of how accidents happen. A BowTie is, in effect, a practical and visual way of putting that same barrier-based thinking to work.

The BowTie method shows how several layers of protection combine to hold incidents back — and how gaps in those layers can let a failure slip through. The approach also sits comfortably alongside the barrier-focused processes set out in safety management guidance.

Crucially, a BowTie doesn’t stop at naming the controls you have. It probes how those controls might fail, through escalation factors, and how you would manage that failure. That gives real insight into your overall risk strategy and where your resources are best spent.

As a qualitative tool, this barrier-based view is especially valuable in complex, fast-moving operations. It works looking forward, as a risk assessment, and looking back, as a way of classifying and analysing incidents.

Which Industries Use The BowTie Method?

BowTie can add value to almost any sector, but it pays off most in high-hazard, complex settings — the places where truly understanding threats, controls, and consequences is non-negotiable.

Sectors that regularly put it to work include:

Why These Sectors Benefit Most

The method delivers the greatest return where an organisation faces:

Summary

The BowTie methodology offers a simple but powerful way to understand and manage risk, pairing visual clarity with structured analysis to support safer operations. By drawing hazards, threats, controls, and consequences into one picture — and by being honest about how barriers can fail — it gives organisations a practical, defensible basis for handling their most complex and high-impact risks.

Overview

One of the greatest strengths of the BowTie methodology is its ability to represent risk visually. Rather than leaving hazards and controls buried in text, a BowTie draws them into a single picture that anyone in the organisation can read and act on.

What BowTie Shows  

A BowTie diagram clearly illustrates:

In short: causes on one side, outcomes on the other, and the barriers that stand between them — all in one view.

The Core Elements of a BowTie

The diagram sets out the core elements of a BowTie, and each one has a specific role to play.

Benefits of Visualization

A BowTie earns its keep because it turns something abstract — risk — into something people can actually see and reason about. That single shift, from words on a page to a shared picture, delivers several practical benefits.

The visual format is what makes a BowTie so effective in workshops — a whole team can read the same diagram and challenge it together, rather than working from a report only one person has digested.

Practical Use

The same diagram flexes to suit very different tasks, which is why organisations return to it across the whole life of a risk — before, during, and after an event.

Summary 

The visual structure of BowTie is what makes it such a powerful tool for raising awareness and strengthening control of risk across an organisation. By showing hazards, threats, controls, and consequences in one clear picture and by making the role of every element explicit, it helps teams see not just where the risks lie, but exactly how they are being managed. 

The Hazard Register identifies and records the hazards associated with an activity, process or workplace. It typically records details such as the hazard description, its source or location, potential consequences, existing controls, responsible persons and actions required to eliminate or reduce the hazard.

This method works well with BowTie analysis. Once a significant hazard has been identified, a BowTie can be used to analyse it in more detail by showing how specific threats could lead to a top event, and what consequences could result. It also identifies the preventive and mitigative controls used to manage the risk.

The Hazard Register should not be confused with a Risk Register. The main difference is that a Hazard Register identifies and tracks hazards, whereas a Risk Register assesses and manages risks associated with those hazards and other uncertainties. For example, a wet floor is a hazard, while the risk of someone slipping, falling and suffering an injury is the associated risk

BowTie Pro provides an effective means of linking the two registers, while recognising that they serve different purposes. The Hazard Register provides visibility of what could cause harm, while the Risk Register helps determine how serious the consequences could be, how likely they are to occur, and what actions should be taken to control the risk.

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