‘Close call’ type incidents at work are all too regular.
Each time it happens, you gather the team, pull out the incident report forms, and someone says, “We should ICAM this.” You agree — but quietly wonder, “What else could we be doing to actually stop this from happening again?”
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Many WHS professionals are highly skilled at investigating events after they occur. But when it comes to visualising risk — clearly seeing the threats, the controls, and what happens when those controls don’t perform as intended — there’s a powerful tool that often gets overlooked: Bow Tie Risk Analysis.
It’s not ICAM. But it works alongside ICAM to help you clearly articulate hazards and controls, and then review how those controls are designed and how they perform — both before and after events occur.
In this article, you’ll find a straightforward guide to what Bow Tie Risk Analysis is, when to use it, and how it supports more effective learning and change.
What is Bow Tie Risk Analysis?
Imagine if you could look at a risk in your business and instantly see the underlying factors and all the ways you're trying to mitigate it. That’s the power of Bow Tie Risk Analysis.
Named for its distinctive shape, a Bow Tie Diagram puts a potential incident - the “Top Event” - in a central position. On the left side, you identify the threats that could lead to that event. On the right, you map out the consequences that could follow. Then, for each threat and consequence, you draw out the controls you’ve put in place. The result is a clear, visual summary of your risk landscape.
It’s simple, but powerful.
A Quick Breakdown of the Bow Tie Diagram Structure:
- Hazard: What could lead to harm (e.g., working at height).
- Top Event: The critical incident you're trying to mitigate (e.g., a fall from height).
- Threats: The specific scenarios that could lead to the Top Event (e.g., no guardrails, slippery surface).
- Potential Consequences: What happens if the Top Event occurs (e.g., injury, legal action).
- Preventive Controls: Barriers that stop threats from triggering the Top Event.
- Mitigative Controls: Measures to reduce harm if the Top Event does happen.
How Bow Tie Analysis Differs from ICAM
While ICAM is used to investigate incidents after they occur - looking into contributing factors - Bow Tie Risk Analysis is proactive. You can also use it after an incident, alongside ICAM, to test where controls failed, or assumptions didn’t hold. So rather than replacing ICAM, Bow Tie complements it by helping you plan better and mitigate future incidents.
In short: an ICAM investigation helps you understand the “why” after an incident and then examines how system conditions influence control performance. Bow Tie helps you see the “what if” before it happens - and how to mitigate it.
Why and When to Use Bow Tie Analysis
If you’re managing workplace safety, you’ve likely faced moments where risk feels abstract - hard to pin down, harder still to communicate. That’s where Bow Tie Analysis comes into its own.
When Should You Use Bow Tie Analysis?
- Before something goes wrong: Bow Tie is a proactive risk tool. It helps you visualise vulnerabilities before they become incidents. This makes it ideal for hazard reviews, project planning, and task-specific risk assessments, especially in high-risk industries.
- After an incident: Paired with an ICAM investigation, Bow Tie helps you visualise exactly where controls failed or were missing. It makes the findings easier to communicate with your team and helps you mitigate recurrence.
- For training and communication: Bow Tie Diagrams are simple, clear, and visual. That makes them an excellent way to train new workers, explain risks to contractors, or engage leadership in safety conversations.
Why Use Bow Tie Analysis?
A Bow Tie Diagram hits the sweet spot: simple enough to understand at-a-glance yet detailed enough to be genuinely useful. The bowtie is your foundation and risk assessment. Identify your hazards for a particular job or task and implement controls.
Here’s what it helps you do:
- Visualise complexity: Instead of pages of risk matrices, you see one diagram that shows how everything connects: threats, controls, consequences.
- Spot weak or missing controls: Bowtie helps you make sure all hazards have controls in place to mitigate these risks.
- Clarify your strategy: It highlights whether controls focus on prevention—often aligned with higher-order controls—or mitigation, which more commonly relies on administrative controls and PPE, supporting better prioritisation of safety improvements.
Think of Bow Tie as a Safety Storyboard
It’s not just a diagram. It’s a conversation tool. A decision-making tool. A risk reduction tool. And it helps convert risk into clear, shared understanding and practical actions across the team.
How Bow Tie Diagrams Help You Mitigate Recurrence
After an incident, the question is always the same: “How do we stop this from happening again?”.
You can run a thorough ICAM investigation. You can uncover all the contributing factors. But unless you visualise those risks and clearly see where your controls failed - or were never there to begin with - you risk repeating the same mistakes.
That’s where Bow Tie Diagrams shine.
Bringing Contributing Factors into Focus
Every event is shaped by contributing factors—underlying conditions that increase the likelihood or severity of failure. Bow Tie Analysis makes these visible by mapping how threats, controls and consequences interact, helping you see:
- Gaps or breakdowns in controls
- Controls that exist on paper but not in practice
- Points where different threats lead to the same critical event
Bow Tie Analysis and ICAM are naturally aligned. Bow Ties are designed upfront to articulate how an organisation believes risk is being controlled, while ICAM examines how those controls actually perform in practice. When an event occurs, ICAM doesn’t recreate the Bowtie, it tests it: questioning the assumptions made, the quality of controls, and the conditions that influenced their effectiveness.
Training in Bowtie Analysis strengthens this process by improving how risks and controls are identified, described and positioned in the first place, leading to clearer analysis, more meaningful learning, and better-designed controls over time.
Example: From Incident to Insight
Say a worker slips and falls in a warehouse. ICAM tells you the contributing factors were a lack of floor maintenance, poor lighting, and no signage.
Using a Bow Tie Diagram:
- Top Event: Slip and fall.
- Threats: Wet floor, poor lighting, cluttered walkway.
- Consequences: Injury, lost productivity, compensation claim.
- Preventive Controls: Floor inspection schedule, lighting maintenance, clear signage.
- Mitigative Controls: First aid training, incident response plan, claim management.
Now your team has a visual plan - not just a written report. You’ve turned a reactive investigation into a proactive risk strategy.
A Tool for Prevention, Not Just Documentation
Too often, risk assessments sit in a folder. Bow Tie Diagrams are different. They're designed to be used - in safety meetings, toolbox talks, contractor onboarding, and boardroom discussions. They help embed risk awareness into your daily operations.
And most importantly, they help you mitigate recurrence, not just explain what happened.
Why ICAM Australia is Your Go-To for Bow Tie Analysis
When it comes to risk and safety, you don’t want theory. You want tools that work and people who know how to help you use them.
That’s exactly what ICAM Australia delivers.
Our team helps businesses across the country use Bow Tie Diagrams to simplify complex risks, communicate them clearly, and make better decisions around safety.
More than incident response specialists, ICAM Australia helps you learn how to mitigate incidents from happening in the first place. With deep expertise in both ICAM investigations and Bow Tie Risk Analysis, we understand how to bring these two frameworks together to give you the full picture - before and after an incident.
How ICAM Australia Supports You
- Practical, tailored consulting: Whether you’re reviewing risks for a high-hazard task or responding to a serious incident, we help you build Bow Tie Diagrams that are clear, accurate, and actionable.
- Training your WHS team: We offer custom training packages so your safety professionals can confidently run their own Bow Tie Analysis and embed it into your WHS practices.
- Integrated safety strategy: Our approach connects Bow Tie to ICAM, showing you how to strengthen your systems, not just tick a box.
If you’re serious about reducing risk, improving communication, and mitigating recurrence in your workplace, Bow Tie Risk Analysis is a game-changing tool.
And ICAM Australia is here to help you use it properly.
Want to learn how Bow Tie Analysis can transform your approach to workplace safety?
Get in touch with ICAM Australia today - for training, support, or expert guidance tailored to your business.
