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GRaphical Interface for reliability Forecasting
The CEO Safety Awards recognize initiatives that make a tangible contribution to improving safety across the Company. They highlight projects that help strengthen risk management in operations and address real field challenges.
The project presented by Els Janssens is fully aligned with this objective. It aims to improve operational teams’ understanding of major accident scenarios and critical safety barriers through the use of simplified bowtie representations developed with GRIF Risk.
This work originated from several findings identified through audits and technical reviews. While risk analyses are now well structured and detailed, their level of understanding remains uneven across different audiences. Critical barriers are not always clearly identified by operational teams, and their operational status is not systematically understood. Lessons learned are also not yet sufficiently integrated into day-to-day practices. In this context, the challenge is not to strengthen the analyses themselves, but to make them truly usable in the field.
The approach is based on developing simplified bowties from existing models. These representations are directly derived from technological risk analyses and retain only the information required for operational use. They structure accident scenarios around initiating events, prevention and protection barriers, and their associated consequences. More advanced modelling parameters are intentionally excluded to ensure the bowties remain easy to read and practical to use.
The selection of scenarios is guided by operational criteria, including the criticality of the units, the availability of lessons learned from major industrial accidents, their educational value for operators, and their relevance across different phases of operation. The objective is to provide materials that reflect the situations most likely to be encountered in the field.
The project goes beyond the development of models alone. It is supported by a deployment framework designed to facilitate adoption by operational teams. Simplified bowties are used during awareness sessions, particularly through regular safety moments. They are complemented by additional materials, such as videos based on real-life accidents and interactive learning formats. Together, these resources aim to embed the understanding of major risks into everyday operational practices.
In this approach, the Risk module is used as the reference tool. It helps structure scenarios, organize barriers in a consistent manner, and maintain a direct link with the detailed analyses. Simplified models can thus be derived without breaking continuity with the existing framework. They can be shared in different formats, including native GRIF files or visual materials, depending on the intended use.
"GRIF Risk is today on the market
one of the best tools for this purpose.
It’s easy to get started and provides
great flexibility in representing bowties."
Interview - Els Janssens
What was the starting point of this project?
“The creation of these typical simplified bowtie representations of major accident scenarios was a keystone of the company’s 3-year technological risk management improvement plan. As you mentioned, a knowledge gap was noticed between the technological risk documentation in the hands of safety engineers and the hands-on information available for operational personnel. This is the reason for the focus on this communication effort in the One HSE strategic long-term plan in 2023.
To prevent major accidents in our high-hazard industry, it’s not sufficient to have safety barriers installed. We also need to ensure that everyone involved in operating our facilities knows what are the worst-case accidents that can happen on their unit and what are the installed critical barriers to prevent or mitigate them.”
Why use simplified bowties?
“A bowtie is an easy-to-read, visual format that permits us to easily explain industrial accident scenarios. It starts with multiple possible initiating events that could lead to the same central hazardous event, which is a release of energy, toxic or flammable materials. Subsequently it shows the potential fire, explosion or dispersion effects which can have an impact on our internal personnel, the external community, our installations and the environment. The installed barriers that are built to chronologically intervene in this sequence of events can also be found on the bowtie.
The One HSE Major Risk division has created toolboxes with videos, card games, etc to provide the local HSE department in the affiliates with supporting materials to get started with explaining the simplified bowties. The toolboxes give typical bowtie representation, that can be easily adapted to the local installation, if needed.”
What does GRIF bring to this approach?
“As GRIF Risk is our in-house recommended software for detailed technological risk analysis, it was the obvious choice to develop some typical examples of simplified bowties. Besides this advantage of digital fluency and not having to re-construct information from scratch, GRIF Risk is today on the market one of the best tools for this purpose. It’s easy to get started and provides great flexibility in representing bowties.”
