Description

Overview

This publication highlights current safety issues and best practice techniques across all trades and ship types. Although most safety elements are well established, this book addresses more formalised processes such as delegation within a safety organisation. Labelled diagrams illustrate the chain of command and the part all personnel must play to ensure safe operations on board ship. Human Element topics such as ‘Safety and the Individual’ recommend approaches to ensuring staff welfare on both practical and cultural levels.

Onboard safety is a wide ranging and expansive subject that includes aspects of all operations conducted on board all ship types. From the simplest one person task to the navigation and manoeuvring of the largest ship in the world, safety is central to the modern shipping industry.

Oil tankers, gas carriers, car carriers, bulk carriers, container vessels and specialised offshore support vessels all have particular aspects of their operation that require certain skills, competence and levels of safety awareness from their crews. However, there is a vast number of onboard operations that are common to all ships, irrespective of their design and purpose, and it is those common aspects of safety that this book highlights.

The purpose of the book is, therefore, to introduce the fundamental aspects of ship operations that can provide a safe working environment for all on board, from the regulations and guidance that governs and controls safety, to the basic onboard measures that can be used to mitigate risk. These will include the shipboard safety organisation, inductions and familiarisation for new crew, safe means of access to and on board ship, general housekeeping, risk assessments, permit to work systems and specific hazardous activities such as dry-docking, lifeboat launch and recovery, entry into enclosed spaces and mooring operations.

The majority of these key elements of safety are not new. The shipboard safety organisation has existed for many years and risk assessments have always been a central part of onboard safety, although in a less formal manner. Formalised risk assessments, more detailed permit to work systems and more intensive induction and familiarisation processes are all now incorporated into companies’ safety management systems, and it is to these standards that the modern seafarer must adhere.

By summarising the key elements and by providing, where necessary, case studies of related incidents, it is hoped that this book will act as a comprehensive introduction to onboard safety for crews, trainees and shoreside personnel.