Managing Catastrophic Risk with THESIS BowTie Solution

Our Solution

To increase awareness of process safety risks throughout the entire global company of 55,000 employees in 30 countries, a robust process safety and risk management solution was developed that included the application of bowtie risk management and training.

ABS Group had the appropriate experience required to assist GKN with its culture change approach. In addition, our Risk Management services offered a BowTie software package that could be tailored to the client's specific needs. A combination of dedicated training courses and BowTie development sessions was developed and supported using THESIS Enterprise, which resides on a central server with internet access to all of GKN's global operating sites.

Customize Fit-for-purpose Training Course

To address the need for a custom training course, our risk management engineers modified ABS Group's standard Risk Assessment Using BowTies training course to make it fit-for-purpose to meet GKN's needs while also integrating it within the company's existing Enterprise Risk Management process. We delivered the course in dedicated 3-day training sessions held in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific regions. The first part of the course covered topics such as Safety Culture, Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Process Safety Management. The second part covered a straightforward introduction to the THESIS BowTie Risk Management software. Attendees of training sessions were largely the regional and plant safety focal points.

Facilitate Bowtie Development Sessions

These sessions were held on different GKN sites, often as follow-on sessions to the training course. The aim of the sessions was to assist site managers with developing bowtie assessments for some of the hazards present on site. The audience for the bowtie development and facilitation sessions consisted of the operators who might be injured, together with maintenance and the site safety people (the focal points responsible for maintaining the bowties), if the management of these hazards fails and a major accident occurs.

ABS Group developed a proven and effective approach by providing a short session introducing the bowtie concept as well as a field visit to observe the equipment containing the hazard and the barriers that manage it. We then returned to the meeting room, developed an initial bowtie on paper and, when these became too detailed, transitioned the design of the bowtie into the software that a scribe had drawn in parallel to the paper version. We further developed the barrier degradation factors and the safeguards to prevent these factors from degrading barrier functionality and effectiveness in the software application THESIS Enterprise, which remains as the permanent documentation of the work performed.

We followed this approach on GKN sites based in the U.S., the Netherlands, UK, Romania , Sweden, India and China.