Every organization has policies regarding defenses, or barriers, to control hazardous energy and prevent it from coming into contact with people, or objects. For example, machine guarding keeps people from contacting moving equipment, and lockout/tagout procedures provide barriers to prevent equipment from moving when it’s being worked on.
Accidents occur when barriers fail. Barrier analysis is used to determine which barriers failed and why, so it is an effective root cause analysis tool for accidents and other incidents. This module describes how to perform a barrier analysis.
• Describe the purpose of barriers and barrier analysis
• Define the three main barrier types
• Describe the effectiveness of each barrier type
• List the steps involved with barrier analysis
• Describe how to evaluate the performance of barriers
