Separating semantic model from pbix dashboard

There could be another way to achieve it. You can create a workspace for dataset where you can publish the semantic model and you can create a new workspace which store your reports. Then you can connect the reports through live connection to the semantic model that is published on the other workspace. Once you refresh the semantic model, your reports get automatically refreshed. 

Tha failures could occur in many ways. The common example are if you changed the name of column in the semantic model and a different column name is used in the report, then it will result into an error which can be visible in the transform data in power query. 

Let me know if you want any further help on this.