Establishing When to Perform a Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA)

Many organizations develop and train personnel in the performance of Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA). This generally represents a significant investment in time and training costs. However, they sometimes find themselves frustrated by the lack of results from this investment. One of the key factors contributing to this lack of results is the failure to properly establish guidelines for when to execute an RCFA, and this results in the over use or under use of this tool.

The following factors should be considered to establish organizational guidelines for the execution of an RCFA:

• A balance must be achieved between the resources available and the number of events performed. Typically, a person should only lead or participate in three to four a year.


• The performance of an RCFA represents a significant investment in the use of company resources. A cost threshold, based on the failure’s impact to the business, should be established. Typically, this may be in the $10K to $20K range. Also, RCFAs are typically used to investigate and resolve all recordable or reportable safety and environmental incidents.

Once established, the organizational guidelines for the execution of an RCFA should be communicated throughout the organization.