How LOPA can help enhance your bowtie diagrams
A bowtie diagram is a risk management tool which allows you to clearly visualise your risks and the barriers in place to prevent or mitigate unwanted consequences. However, bowtie diagrams take a primarily qualitative approach, therefore they can lack sufficient quantitative evidence to back up decision making. While these decisions are typically made by expert judgement, it can still be helpful to have data to point to when any discrepancies arise.
Enter LOPA…
LOPA will take your bowtie diagrams to the next level by using concrete quantitative data to evaluate the effectiveness of barriers in preventing or mitigating the top event. It ensures that the risk of the top event and associated consequences is reduced to a tolerable level through sufficient and effective protection layers.
LOPA in bowtie master
At a snapshot:
The Salus Suite team have gone a step further, developing a Toggle PFD traffic light colour system, used to help highlight the severity of event frequency calculated across threats, barriers and consequences. Users can clearly identify where barriers could fail and conduct deeper investigation through a Sensitivity Analysis, adjusting frequency to create a ‘what if’ factor determining the strength of each barrier and its effectiveness. LOPA-integrated Bowtie Diagrams are fully compatible with Excel, LOPA reviews can be both exported or imported from or into Bowtie Master to deepen reports into safety and incident understanding
Like the rest of our software, LOPA is fully customizable. Input your targets and change colours and to align with your organisation’s standards. Wondering what else you can do with LOPA in Bowtie Master? Send us a message at support@salus-suite.com.
Benefits of using LOPA within your bowtie
LOPA is less time-consuming and allows for greater accuracy than other quantitative risk assessment methods. LOPA can help resolve conflict and improve decision-making in an organisation providing a simplified method for evaluating risk. If you are involved in LOPA analysis, you can now lift your LOPA out of spreadsheets by visualizing them in a bowtie format.
LOPA aids in making more precise risk judgments and can identify operations and practices that may need more safeguards. Lastly, LOPA provides a consistent basis for judging the sufficiency of independent protection layers (IPLs) to control the risk of an accident scenario, making risk assessments consistent across your bowtie diagrams.
If you are interested in developing a more rounded understanding of LOPA, Layer of Protection Analysis – Simplified Process Risk Assessment published by CCPS books is a great external resource.
When to use LOPA
When exactly can we apply LOPA? It is typically applied after a qualitative hazard evaluation and can be used when a scenario is believed to be too complex for the team to make a reasonable risk judgement using qualitative judgement alone. But apart from these, it can also be used to analyse scenarios that originate from any source, including design option analysis and incident investigations.
Here are three example uses of LOPA:
Limitations of using LOPA
However, there are still limitations to using LOPA. It is not intended for all scenarios and should not replace quantitative risk analysis when complex human behavior models or equipment failure models are required. LOPA is also not a hazard identification tool. It depends on prior hazard identification methods to identify scenarios, causes, and safeguards. And most importantly, LOPA results may vary between organisations due to different risk tolerance criteria, making direct comparisons challenging. Numbers generated by a LOPA calculation are not precise values of a risk scenario.
If you are looking to gain a deeper understanding of your organisation’s risks, barriers, and consequences, quantifying risks with LOPA will enhance your safety processes. Get in contact with a member of our team through support@salus-suite.com to maximize your bowties potential in Bowtie Master.