Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Using Tripod Beta Method

Most incident investigations stop one step too early, at the action a person took, and produce a recommendation about care or training. Tripod Beta is built to keep going: it separates the agent, the object and the event, traces each failed barrier, and asks what preconditions made the failure likely before asking who was involved. The method is not difficult and applying it honestly is, because it usually ends somewhere organisational. Delegates work a real incident through the full tree, their own where confidentiality permits.

It runs 7 times over the published calendar, in 6 cities and live online. Every date is the same programme with the same content and the same certificate.

• Build a trio of agent, object and event from the facts of an incident.
• Identify the barriers that should have worked and classify how each one failed.
• Trace an immediate cause to its preconditions and to the underlying condition.
• Write a recommendation that changes a condition rather than exhorting a person.
• Recognise where an investigation has stopped early, including your own.

Incident investigators and HSE advisers, operations and maintenance supervisors who lead investigations, and the managers who review the reports and approve the actions.

Short input, then work. Across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each, the balance sits deliberately with the second: a programme where the trainer talks for six hours produces notes rather than capability.

• Your own material

  Exercises run on situations delegates bring, not on a case study written for a different organisation in a different decade.

• A capped cohort

  Small enough that everybody is asked something. Executive programmes are capped tighter still.

• Practice under scrutiny

  The difficult conversation, the challenged assumption, the decision defended out loud. Judgement is not built by watching.

• Something to take back

  Each day ends with a thing you can use on Monday rather than a slide deck you will not reopen.

• A completed Tripod Beta tree for one real incident.
• A barrier analysis distinguishing missing, failed and defeated barriers.
• A set of recommendations tied to underlying conditions, each with an owner.

A GATI certificate recording what you attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended.

Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record, which is what makes it worth holding. It records participation. This site will not imply one it does not have.