captmrb - what you are saying about the responsability of the DPOs and the important job they are doing sounds very good if it was true…but the reality is not that. Im a DP consultant and i can mention my last job which was for the last 10 months to perform a DP audit all DP fleet (rigs and drillships) of an oil mayor company to avoid an incident similar to the Deepwater Horizon and the reality is not even near of what you are saying. The results of the 12 rigs/drillships audits are all very similar and are sumarised below with respect of the DPOs:
- DPOs have not enough experience for these positions in these kind of vessels
- DPOs are not interested in learning, just sit there 12 hrs/shift to get paid, they dont even fill up the DP checklists properly (this when they fill them up)
- They dont read any DP IMCA guidelines (all were members of IMCA)
- Most cases they dont know what is an FMEA (it is expected the DPOs to read the FMEA)
- DPOs just trust in the DP control system is not going to fail
- DPOs not even sitting in the chair, but ‘working’ in the bridge computer…
- Questions like ‘are the speed and latitud input signals to the gyros entered manually or are coming from the DGPSs?’ or ‘when is activated the DP power chop’ not able to answer…
- Etc. etc. etc…
Conclusions are that most of the DPOs wont react properly in the event of an emergency or loss of position…and this is verified in the IMCA 10 years study for DP incidents where the higher % of causes for a loss of position was Operator Error.
Only this year, there were 4 loss of position with 1 emergency disconnection (talking about these 12 rigs/drillships) i have audited…the emergency disconnection could have been avoided if the DPO actuated correctly…
In my last DP annual trials a fire was ignited in a thruster and the DPO was not able to react and hit the emergency stop…
So i am surprise there are no more serios incidents offshore…maybe because the DP control systems are good, but no because DPOs are good, im sad to say…
They should take they job more seriously as you mention they have a great responsability…