Abstract: Dam safety requirements need to be improved to cover more than just meeting the available standards and criteria. Potential Failure Modes Analysis (PFMA) has currently emerged as an effective and popular approach for promoting dam safety management in the U.S.A. federal agencies have employed the PFMA methodology as a new, through tool for dam safety evaluation through a subjective and qualitative risk assessing approach. Potential failure modes (PFMs) and scenarios are identified and screened and their occurrence’s likelihoods and consequence are qualitatively estimated. The discovery and designation of PFMs and their categories are the result of an exhaustive engineering-based review, judgment and assessment of all available data/information about a project. A major advantage of the PFMA approach is the process itself which promotes creative and critical thinking by focusing on recognizing,discussing, and assessing PFMs and their caused consequences through an objective collective effort. Consequently, remedial measure can be determined as needed. The PFMA process is usually conducted in concert with the periodic independent consultant inspection, or conducted prior to a licensee’s proposed major remedial actions or as needed upon a dam’s defects that appear. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of any federal agency of the U.S.A.