Risk and process safety
Keep hazards, controls and changes connected
Link risk assessments, bow tie barriers and management of change records to the work happening on site.
Bow tie · Transfer line TL-07
Threats
Overpressure
Corrosion
Hose failure
Preventive barriers
Pressure relief valve
Inspection schedule
Top event
Loss of containment
Mitigating barriers
Gas detection
Emergency shutdown
Consequences
Fire
Injury
Each barrier carries a named owner.
Change request · MOC-0193
Replace pump P-104 with a higher pressure model
- Risk impact
- Requires control review
- Review
- Closes in 30 days
Approvals
- ✓ Process engineer
- ✓ Area supervisor
- HSE
Three questions
The questions every operation asks
Process safety work comes down to three questions. FirstEHS gives each one a record that stays linked to the work and the events that test it.
01
What could go wrong?
Hazards, consequences and existing controls are recorded against the asset, task or area they belong to, in your own risk matrices. The assessment is versioned, so people always work from the current picture and can see how it changed.
02
Which controls matter?
For major accident hazards, bow tie views map the threats, the preventive and mitigating barriers, and the escalation factors that degrade them. Each barrier carries an owner, so somebody is accountable for keeping it healthy.
03
What changes when the plant or process changes?
Temporary and permanent changes go through management of change before they reach the plant, with the risk impact stated and the right reviewers named. When the change window ends, the review that closes it is part of the same record.
In plain language
Risk matrices, bow ties and MOC, without the jargon
These terms carry a lot of weight in process safety. Here is what each one means and what it looks like in FirstEHS.
Risk matrices
A matrix scores how likely a harm is and how severe it would be, so teams agree which risks need action first. In FirstEHS the matrix, its scoring rules and the review cycle follow your own standard, not a fixed template.
Bow tie views
A bow tie puts one major hazard in the middle and shows, on the left, what can cause it and the barriers that prevent that, and on the right, the barriers that limit the damage if prevention fails. It turns a study into a working diagram people can point at.
Management of change
MOC is the discipline of reviewing any change to equipment, procedures or organisation before it goes live, because unreviewed change is a common path to process safety events. The record holds what is changing, why, the risk impact, who approved it and when it is reviewed again.
Worked example
One maintenance change, end to end
Illustration only. This change is invented to show how one maintenance change relates to its assessment, controls and approval trail. It is not a real customer change.
Change request
The maintenance planner raises the change: what is being replaced, why it failed, and that the replacement runs at a higher pressure. The request names a temporary duration and the people affected.
Risk impact
The reviewer checks the assessment for that line: the higher discharge pressure touches an existing overpressure scenario, so the risk impact is recorded as "requires control review" rather than "no change".
Controls reviewed
The bow tie barrier list for that scenario is read against the new pump: the pressure relief path and the low-flow trip stay valid; the operator check on the local gauge is updated in the operating procedure.
Approval routing
The change routes to the process engineer, the area supervisor and HSE. Each approval, comment and condition is recorded against the request: who approved, on what basis, and when.
Implementation and closeout
The pump is installed under a permit that references the change record. At the end of the review window, the closing review confirms the new gauge check is in the procedure and the temporary conditions are removed.
Connections
How these records meet permits and incident learning
Risk studies only earn their keep when they reach the people doing the work and learn from what happens on site.
Risk assessments meet live work
A permit for work in a rated area can reference the assessment that covers it, so the crew and the approver see the same hazards and controls the study recorded, not a copy that drifted.
Barriers tested by real events
When an incident or near miss happens, the investigation can trace which barriers were in place and whether they worked, feeding concrete findings back to the bow tie and its owners.
Changes checked against permits
Where a change affects how work is done, the permit types and pre-start checks that depend on it are flagged for review, so paperwork catches up with the plant instead of lagging behind it.
FirstEHS keeps these records connected and traceable. Sound risk decisions still belong to the engineers, supervisors and approvers who make them. Software does not make an operation compliant on its own, and no system can substitute for the discipline of the people running the plant.
FAQ
Risk and process safety questions
Discuss your process safety workflow
Bring one assessment, bow tie or change your team actually manages. We will walk through how it lives in FirstEHS next to the permits and events that test it.