Health & Safety

The growing scale and complexity of marine transportation necessitate a proactive and multi-faceted approach to risk management. While professional expertise, experience, and regulatory frameworks provide valuable advantages, they cannot anticipate all potential risks which is why Understanding effective risk assesments is important.

A review of incidents often finds that opportunities were missed to identify and mitigate the risks. As with any process, risk assessments may be ineffective and unlikely to contribute to safety if they are missing the point, are not understood, or seen merely as a ‘tick box exercise’. Risk assessments should ideally occur on many levels, both as a formal, documented process and as a dynamic, ‘on the job’ activity. Continue reading “Understanding effective risk assesments”

At least eight people died in boarding accidents last year, and bad ladders are part of the problem. Bad ladders are a major issue for marine pilot safety.

Recently I was involved in a case with a non-compliant and dangerous pilot transfer arrangement on a bulk carrier heading to Vlissingen anchorage for partial discharging.

On the 17th August around 2324 local time the first pilot boarded the vessel at Wandelaar pilot station via the SWATH pilot vessel. The ladder that had been rigged was not used because the servicing pilot had been put on board via the retractable gangway of this boat, and therefore was able to step directly onto the deck of the vessel.

The agent asked me for an English explanation on why this ladder would not be safe. I considered it interesting enough for educational purposes to extend my reply a bit and share it online. Continue reading “Bad ladders are a major issue for marine pilot safety”

Most marine craft represent Systems of Systems (SoS) and are an ensemble of complex systems, which have the potential for an extraordinary amount of structural and technical complexity and improving survey practice and process.

Because of this, a SoS can be vulnerable to sudden catastrophic collapse because of small and insignificant partial functionality losses in one of the constituent systems. Continue reading “Swiss Cheese? Improving Survey Practice and Process”