Maritime Operations and Management
The Board of Directors of your organization has expressed concern about fleet safety performance. Despite having a safety management system that meets the requirements of the IMS Code, accidents continue to occur at an unacceptable rate. Managers are asked to put forward practical proposals for a sustainable improvement, while maintaining profitability.
A big concern about the fleet and safety performance has expressed. Unfortunately, even after all these and IMO code checklists in place, accidents on ships still takes place in a way that can’t be accepted because of its big rate. Above, I will put forward some practical proposals for a sustainable improvement, while maintaining profitability remains priority. What is more, a description on how organizational accidents can be developed is going to be given along with an example in order to support my account and lastly, an examination on how changing the safety culture of an organization might actually improve the fleet safety performance.
Within the maritime industry, the ISM code if it is not the most, it is one of the most important rules that it is needed to be complied by all of the shipping companies. In 1994 this specific code was adopted as a region of the SOLAS (Safety of The Life At Sea) Convention. It contributes as a very important element to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in order to secure and maintain the safety onboard and every ship must comply with the rules of this code. (Marine Law, 2016)
It is evident that profit is the main cause of all organizations and how to make more and more of it. Sometimes though, having in mind only this they leave aside the safety section on work. As an instant result of this, a lot of accidents regarding safety are happening with huge costs. However, insuring and maintaining safety might cost big amounts of money. The connection between profit and safety then, becomes the main issue that needs attendance and a highly effective solution.
One of the most important factors in avoiding accidents is the safety awareness. Companies and organizations must realize that they have to spend generous amount of money in order to maintain the safety on board, something that will lead to future profits along with safety. An important issue involved in avoiding accidents is the shipboard environment. All seafarers have to learn to work safely and follow the instructions on the ship because the shipboard environment can sometimes be dangerous. In order to achieve this, companies and organizations must insure to provide correct and well planned instructions to the crew by investing money in managers that are authorized to inform them and ensure that these conditions are applied every time while being ready to solve any instant query or question that might someone has and an answer has to be given.
Another serious issue in avoiding accidents is equipment and materials. Α lot of accidents would have been averted if the equipment was properly used and installed and effective. Equipment can fail because of overloading and this may lead to a serious accident. Some parts of the machines can be really dangerous and they must be provided with instructions from the organization on how to use them in order to avoid an accident. It is very important that owners, operators and crewmembers have to ensure the appropriate maintenance on the equipment, let alone the fact that they have to be sure that the ship is equipped with all the necessary equipment for an emergency, so it can provide the best chance for survival for all that they are on board. In addition, training and experience consists a very important issue on how to avoid an accident. Many times a luck of skill, experience and knowledge that has to do with shipboard procedures can cause accidents. A seafarer may need care and supervision if he will be exposed at a procedure or an equipment, so everyone can learn how to deal with these situations if they need to act at theirselves sometime. Accidents can be minimized or even more eliminated by paying attention and learning the appropriate procedures from an expert. What comes next is management and the supervison from an authorized person. In this package, budgeting time and funds for safety with related activities and equipment are included. Crew members have the responsibility to point more safe ways to do things, how to react on risks and to decide if a practice is safe or no so they can accept it or otherwise reject it. Furthermore is the training. The crew of the ship must be well trained and ready on how to react on an emergency accidents and in actions that concern safety on board. For this reason funds must be used for the correct training in order to avoid these situations and maintain a future profit because of that. Last but no least is the communication between the people on board with the company. Ship owners must ensure that correct communication systems are used and ensure that all are familiar on how to using this system in order to avoid missundertanding situations and luck of communication, that will might lead to an accident. (tjpiechocki01, 2014)
Despite the mitigating strategies and the efforts to minimize and prevent the organisational accidents, they are still happening in a rate that it can’t be unnoticeable. These accidents are those that are a result from actions of a company or an organization, the workplace and the people. According to James Reason ‘’Organizational accidents have multiple causes involving many people operating at different levels of their respective companies’’. These type of accidents may be caused because of latent conditions or active failures. When we are talking about latent conditions we mean the weaknesses that a company or an organization has in their system, they often exist without being recognized, and they may have an impact on the company’s culture. These weaknesses could be conflicts between the production and safety goals, bad planning and communication between people, bad maintenance and more. Active failures are referred to human mistakes or failures, or bad decisions. The consequences of these failures have an impact on health and safety while they tend to happen on people that they use some kind of machinery. The organization and the workplace build defenses or control layers and barriers in order to prevent the organizational accidents but there are always some weakness in the company’s procedures and checklists according to James Reason’s Swiss cheese model, so eventually the accident happens.
An imaginary organizational accident to support all the above is the grounding of the GR Tanker Ship NIKOLETA SOFIOU. She started her journey from Piraeus port and her final destination was Crete’s port but eventually she grounded on a reef near Crete on March 22, 2014. At the time that NIKOLETA SOFIOU grounded it was referred that a third mate was in charge to control the ship. The results of this accident were very catastrophic especially for the environment because thousands of barrels of oil were spilled into the sea contributing to a very serious pollution. The specific grounding of NIKOLETA SOFIOU was actually a cause of incidents that happened beginning with the third’s mate disability to maneuver correctly the ship, and that came from the fact that he was very tired from working so many hours in a raw. What is more, master had a lot of responsibility for this. He failed to have a correct navigation watch given because he had consumed a lot of alcohol at that time. Furthermore, a failure from the side of SOFIOS Shipping Company came up. The company had not provided an appropriate master for the ship as long as a fully rested crew. At last, the specific ship was so inappropriate due to the fact that it had luck on equipment and on its manning levels. In addition there was no good training for the crew and the pilotage services couldn’t fit with the hull at all. All these chain of incidents led one by one to the actual accident of the ship. (Imaginary accident)
The safety culture of a company is referring to the association of beliefs, values and behaviors that a group of people at work use to share each other with respect to safety. It is very important to focus on the safety culture of a company because there is an instant connection between the safety culture at the top of the company and the safety itself. Most of the times safety culture indicates the psychosocial condition of the employees. That means that an improvement on the safety culture has a serious impact on their behavior regarding safety. A lot of organizations use effective strategies in order to minimize accidents but the safety culture is the one that will restrict how efficient this will be. In other words, the more you improve the safety culture the most effectual will these technics be. If there is an indigent safety culture in an organization it is most likely that the employees will not take under serious consideration any safety instructions that may be given to them and as a result they are less effective. An improvement to the culture contributes to the effectiveness of the employees and make them to start valuating these guidances. An improvement to education and training in the culture of safety will play a significant role to a more efficient fleet safety. If the employees learn to understand better the procedures they are into, they will be more safe. In order to be more educated, they need to be trained better, be ready to face difficulties and learn how to deal with them. Lastly, communication consists a major key to success in safety culture. If there is a development on this sector, employees will begin to understand that the company actually cares about what they believe and as a result a strong dependence will be achieved. (Administrator, 2011) Having said these, it is evident that as you try and finally succeed in improving the safety culture, this improvement has an important impact on the safety as far as fleet is concerned, due to the fact that it affects all the people that work there in a way that they try to become better and better and be more careful as the time passes by.
In conclusion, it can be inferred that a successful way for companies within the maritime industry to achieve a sustainable improvement while the making of profits remains priority, is to fund more budgets of money regarding safety. This tactic will lead to minimization of accidents in a big rate and because of that a lot of money will be saved instead. Moreover, organizational accidents still occur but sufficient efforts including mitigating strategies are being made in order to minimize them or to eliminate them if it is possible. At last, it can be inferred that through the improvement of the safety culture the fleet safety is also improved but this is something that it can not be changed over a night, so a descent amount of time is needed, but after all it is a vital change that the organization must apply to improve the safety at fleet and run smoothly all the operations.
Bibliography
- Administrator, G. (2011, october). Safety Culture: What is it and How does it Affect Fleet Safety.
- tjpiechocki01. (2014, 05 28). Accident prevention and safety at sea.
