Degradation factor (escalation factor)
A degradation factor — also called an escalation factor — is a condition that defeats or weakens a barrier: the corroded relief line, the alarm nobody responds to, the procedure nobody follows. Each one needs its own degradation control.
Every barrier on a bowtie is a claim: this will stop the event. Degradation factors are the honest footnotes to that claim — the specific conditions under which it stops being true. An inspection programme degraded by intervals stretched under budget pressure. A relief valve degraded by blocked-in isolation. A competency scheme degraded by contractor turnover.
The older bowtie literature calls these escalation factors; ICMM-style control frameworks and this product call them degradation factors. Either way, the modelling rule is the same: each factor gets its own degradation control (escalation-factor barrier) — the audit that catches the stretched interval, the car-seal register that catches the blocked-in valve.
This is the part of a bowtie that auditors probe hardest, because it is where wishful thinking hides. A diagram with thirty pristine barriers and no degradation factors is not a strong risk model; it is an unexamined one. Conversely, a barrier whose failure modes are named, with controls watching each one, is a barrier a reviewer can believe.
The psychosocial hazards template carries eight worked degradation factors — worth reading precisely because that discipline is where "the control exists on paper but not in practice" is most common.
Last reviewed 2026-08-09 · Back to the glossary
See the method in working software.
Six worked bowtie examples ship with the product — open one read-only, no sign-in, and read every control in full.