Falling down bridges

By Andrew Guest
What happens on the bridges of ships involved in incidents has become the focus of increasing attention as the industry, regulators and accident investigators ponder the causes.

Groundings and collisions continue to occur, sometimes when basic errors in seamanship have been made, but just as frequent are the failures of those on the bridge to communicate effectively and work as a team.

Within the space of a few weeks these dysfunctional bridges have been the subject of two warnings from accident investigators in the UK and Norway. Last month a casualty report into the grounding in 2008 of a bulk carrier under pilotage pointed out the Master and Chief Officer and the pilot had all undergone training in Bridge Resource Management (BRM) but still failed to work as a team.

The investigators from the Accident Investigation Board Norway (AIBN) spoke to other bridge teams and pilots and came to the conclusion that “Shipmanagement companies and the pilotage service are still lagging behind in establishing how to introduce the BRM principles in practice”.

The British Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) meanwhile told the industry in a recent briefing that in a number of incidents a breakdown in the application of bridge team management had been identified as “a major factor”.
Companies that train their officers in BRM and the like can only find out if it has been effective when it has to be put into practice in a real-life situation, rather than on a simulator where the consequences of failure are limited (perhaps being made to do it all over again). Near-miss incidents may be the next best thing, assuming the bridge teams make shore management aware they have occurred and an internal investigation is carried out. Sending officers found wanting on refresher courses might be a waste of time and money if BRM as a concept is flawed or if the training provider is substandard or the officers do not take it seriously enough.