Strategic Management-Alvin Tormon

I will be posting a friend of mine's study regarding ISM in the domestic industry, this will be a progessive blogging. At the end of the Trimester i hope that this would shed some light on the situation of ISM implementation in the domestic shipping trade in the Philippines.



Hope this will be helpful information for everyone.



Joel Go



Managing Risks and Safety of Ships:
The Domestic Shipping Experience

I. Background

Shipping industry in the Philippines have been experiencing disasters for the last decade. Most damaging results are the loss of life and oil spills. These do not include loss of property (vessel itself), damage to environment and the severe effect on the industry’s reputation. As a practitioner in the field of ship-management and safety in shipping operations, it is observed that we are in the reactive stage of preventing the persistence of the shipping accidents. One proactive approach we have is the Safety Management Systems however, the effectiveness and strength of its implementation is not felt well by the ship-owners and the crew. Ship-owners and crew are as well not keen in implementing the system. Reasons could be the owner’s culture, economic limitations, quality and macho attitudes of our crew (crew competence), or probably the lack of implementing guidelines, quality or quantity of enforcing personnel, or the strength of the regulation that will force the ship owners or the crew to implement safety. These identified reasons are considered to be hazards and human in origin. Statistics says that 80% of the accidents are caused by human and only 20% are from technical failures.

Considering the above hazards and the author’s experience in handling domestic vessels and local crew in implementing safety systems, a qualitative risk assessment is prepared for ships navigating with less competent crew. This paper is presented with the hope that it will assist the co practitioners on how to implement safety in the most economical but pro active way.