Decision making procedures of vessel’s shipboard management

Abstract

This research study offers a contribution to the field of shipping and safety using secondary evidences from shipping accident reports by MAIB and primary evidences from a questionnaire survey and a semi-structured interview completed by shipping company managers and seafarers who work on UK either registered vessels or hold a UK Certificate of Competency (CoC) while working on non-UK vessels. The study has been initiated from three research questions: 1. To what extent do, the human element affect the safety of a ship? 2. What is the relationship among safety practice aspects in the shipping industry? and 3. How can human errors and their impact be prevented? The study first reviewed a wide body of literature on issues related to safety culture which included a brief comparison between the safety perspective of maritime and aviation industries. With the help of the extant knowledge obtained from the literature, this research embarked on providing an explanation of the gap that existed in the safety culture in the maritime industry. Followed by the literature, the study analysed the trend of the shipping accidents and the root causes of human error to understand further about the occurrence of the casualties. The analysis has shown a downward trend of accidents; however, the occurrences of very serious accidents are higher than less serious accidents. The analysis of shipping accidents reports from MAIB has also revealed various root causes of human errors that contributed to the occurrence of shipping accidents. Identification of the root causes of accidents led to a questionnaire based safety practice survey completed by 317 seafarers. Hierarchical Cluster analysis has been used to classify the selected safety aspects into two clusters based on their internal consistency. Multiple Regression Analysis has been used to identify the parameters based on the seafarer’s perception that, influence the safety culture in shipping based on the seafarer’s perception. Three parameters have been shown to have a particularly close relationship with safety culture which are: communication and language barrier; health awareness; and job satisfaction. A semi-structured interview has been conducted among 10 shipping company senior managers and seafarers. The interview contributed to the identification of six safety practice themes. Bringing light to the safety culture issues, this study has attempted to expand the boundaries of research on the subject and contributed to a more holistic understanding of the various underlying factors that influence safety and the effectiveness of maritime regulation in the industry.

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