You have very high expectations for your newly placed 3rd engineer and those who sailed on much older vessels with limited automation and are now filling your engine room. As for your chief and his training, onboard a drillship or modu I find it’s going to be very hard to get some one on one time with him as he is dealing with just about every dept onboard… If you could go to a class that prepared you for the plant or system you will be working on and knowledge of the field and what is expected prior to boarding, your telling me you would not like that advantage to ensure your safety and safety of others working with you. How to handle issues that are not generic to the industry but more specialized to the vessel you are on and the availability to brainstorm and process certain scenarios with those who have handled them in the past is invaluable insight to me. If you haven’t once said to your self damn, how did this SOB ever make it out here in this industry… I believe vetting of an employees ability is necessary in some form of specialized training and to say it’s not is again asinine… Bc at the end of the day your not standing a 365 24/7 watch so you go to bed hoping they will make the correct, corrective action in a situation… More than likely your job and in certain situations your life are in someone else’s hands… Your comfortable with this?!
I’m sure some engineers would prefer an unmanned engine room bc as it stands on most rigs ERO’s are spread thin and the ability to get maint, pms and corrective actions completed is much of a task when you loose one guy to just sitting in the ECR. But this is another animal…
you do a manual blackout recovery on a drill ship that is latched up?
I do blackout drills tied up at the dock. If this isn’t an option you can still go through the motions and drill people on the dead ship recovery procedure while on DP. This whole thing should be included in the familiarization class you speak of. Personally I don’t care how many certificates from classes a guy has I’m not gonna be comfortable until we’ve discussed it at length and you’ve demonstrated to me you can do it. Onboard continuing training is part of my job scope. We are all busy but the chief and 1st can always make time for training and drills. I always tell the guys to wake me up 30 minutes before you decide to do something stupid. Don’t wake me up in time to be a witness. In order for them to be able to do that I need to make sure they are trained. I wouldn’t put a rookie third in that position to start with. Even he would be a better option than a DPO at the opposite end of the vessel. If the DP control room was near the engine room and switchboards why would you want the DPO to leave the con and go fool with that.
Maybe we are talking about two different things. Pressing a certain sequence of buttons on a screen is a first step. I’m talking about flipping everything to local, dead bar closing gens online, manual paralleling, energizing transformers, and resetting thruster drives. Limited power can be established in 30-45 seconds, full power shortly thereafter. A week long class in a simulator isn’t gonna do a mate/DPO any good for that. That’s why you need properly trained engineers for this. I’ve often heard people say the marine crew on a rig/drillship are second class citizens. If they expect a DPO or electrician to stand watch over the power plant that’s a dumb policy.
I agree with you 100%, there is no substitute for and engineer in the basement. There’s are reason one goes to school to steer and one goes to turn a wrench and both come out with 2 different Lic. I use the term school loosely…
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;155936]Just plain stupid not to have even one guy down in the basement watching things. Imagine the congressional hearings trying to explain that a mate with no engineering background is monitoring the machinery via computer and video camera. It’s all well and good when the automation works but you still need someone to be in the space and trained to restore power manually.[/QUOTE]
I spent a month sailing on a very new, very advanced, highly automated vessel last year. In spite of all the automation, many engineering functions were done manually and rounds were made through all the engineering spaces. We had a blackout in port and there was a lot of manual resetting to do. There were hiccups with the PMS and engines had to be started and stopped manually on occasion. I would not want to lay that at the feet of a mate in addition to all the other things he/she must handle.
Automation is a double edged sword. It is no substitute for a vigilant pair of eyes and ears.
Spent a few years working on diesel electric vessel with VFDs. If you get a blackout on side of a platform thats major, it happened to us. We were running a split bus and when it happened we lost half the propulsion system and fortunately there was no wind or current and were able to get away without any contact. It still took the engineering staff, two licensed chiefs, a third assistant and a q med, who was manned in the ECR when it happened over 30 minutes to get us back online. We were very lucky to have such good weather and it happen at 1145 during shift change. How much worse could it have been, if it were a DPO in inclement weather, who then had to make a phone call to get somebody to show up?
That’s the kind of shite that needs to be passed on to a congress critter.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;155925]I’m confused, “if the dpo needs more thrusters” what does this mean? If you’re on DP and need more thrusters the computer makes that command the dpo nor the engineer have nothing to do with it. If all gens are not online already the PMS will initiate auto start. If your PMS does not have a demand auto start feature then good practice would be to have everything running all the time. Seems you would still want someone down below monitoring everything in real time. We still have someone making a round from the machinery space to the thruster compartment every half hour. There is no way to smell, hear or feel though a camera system.[/QUOTE]
Exactly
Dpo’s monitor alarms and engineers go and fix them as well as the walk around coz when then are walking around they are not looking at a screen.
If the dpo needs more thrusters he starts one just like a generator as the dpo can anticipate before its too late.
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[QUOTE=catherder;155971]I spent a month sailing on a very new, very advanced, highly automated vessel last year. In spite of all the automation, many engineering functions were done manually and rounds were made through all the engineering spaces. We had a blackout in port and there was a lot of manual resetting to do. There were hiccups with the PMS and engines had to be started and stopped manually on occasion. I would not want to lay that at the feet of a mate in addition to all the other things he/she must handle.
Automation is a double edged sword. It is no substitute for a vigilant pair of eyes and ears.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like a vessel without an effective fmea?
[QUOTE=captrob;155979]That’s the kind of shite that needs to be passed on to a congress critter.[/QUOTE]
I am all for eng walking around looking but fact is many vessels are built to a class approved standard that allows unmanned engine rooms.
I have come to like the idea of the alarms being monitored by someone else other than the person fixing and that is that they get reminded to fix them.
[QUOTE=powerabout;155909]You have noticed that aircraft cockpits only have 2 guys in them these days?[/QUOTE]
Modern aircraft don’t have much that can be fixed in flight anymore so there really isn’t any need for a flight mechanic.
Unmanned engine rooms have been around for a long time and they work well provided certain criteria are met. You have to have a top of the line ship with automated systems you can believe in and DP operators that have a good working relationship with the engineering department. I have seen a LOT of problems with drilling rigs operating unmanned engine rooms with DPOs controlling things. Nothing catastrophic yet but still a lot of things that give me pause and I reported my findings, to no avail most of the time. Here is what I have found, the DPOs many times don’t care to be engineers and they also don’t let the automation system work or INSIST that it work. If your FMEA was done properly there should never be a reason for a DPO to manually start an engine during normal operation. The DPOs are overwhelmed at times with answering the phone, taking care of permit to work logging etc.,etc. But the biggest problem I see is the vessels are built with a barely minimal control system. Kongsberg’s K-Chief is excellent but it comes in many versions. I see companies only buying the minimal version and they also are not paying for the automated auxiliary equipment needed. There should not be a reason for an engineer to go pump out a bilge well under normal operation for example. The other problem is nuisance alarms which eventually cause complacency. There should never be an alarm one just acknowledges without an accountable action. I see under manned electrical departments as a contributing factor to this. In short, the problem is not primarily the DPO or engineer but companies trying to run things on the cheap equipment and manpower wise. Just because it is legally acceptable by the class or flag state does not make it practically safe. Once you dig below the surface of some reported excellent safety and operational records you find a lot of things that simply did not get reported. On drilling vessels that have unmanned engine rooms with DPOs in charge of engine room monitoring I have suggested more than once on a 6th generation rig that in between wells I go out and hit the “abandon” button to see how the DPOs handle that. Never had a company take me up on the offer. So they know they are walking a tightrope.
Little boats aside, doesn’t the USCG view UMS as “periodically” unmanned?
[QUOTE=Steamer;156016]Little boats aside, doesn’t the USCG view UMS as “periodically” unmanned?[/QUOTE]
They do but have basically put all that kind of stuff off on the class society. ABS has periodically unattended classification as does DNV and the rest However, I have seen no class truly enforce the stipulations that come with the classification. Remote alarm panels in certain quarters area are supposed to be functional.Rarely seen them all completely functional on a drilling rig. That’s just an easy, small and relatively harmless example of how things can be legal but not truly up to requirements. The more serious things often just get covered up or ignored by management ashore and afloat. There are bonuses and bragging rights at stake.
All of our new boats are classed ACCU. We still have someone on watch in the engine room 24/7. When the vessel is maneuvering in port or on DP there is an engineer in the control room. Doesn’t the rigs 500m zone procedures require a manned engine room? I know our ASOP requires a manned engine room inside the 500. Why would they require us to be manned and the rig not be?
You work in the offshore Fraq…stop asking sensible questions right this minute!
Imca guidlines are 3 licenced engineers in ecr/ machinery space when on dp.
When we say dpo’s get overwhelmed, and they can, how many people in the bridge are we talking about?
One on dp console?
One on vms/ballast?
One spare?
How to explain to management you now want an engineer to take the gen set functions away from the vms just because, so either he leaves the panel to attend to an alarm or rings somebody to do it.
Management says ok you need somebody to push acknowledge, ring a phone and read whats on the screen then…
I’m very confused, what are you talking about?
(0,o)/
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;155944]If the person can’t run the plant manually they have no business being the OICEW. If all you have is an electrician standing watch over diesel gens and their ancillary equipment you’ve fucked up even more. Please tell me this isn’t the norm on a rig? It sounds like a large excursion in bad wx with an unintentional disconnect waiting to happen. Bad cement jobs and pissing contests almost did us in the last time. This is just gross negligence that will lead to a permatorium.
Edit
I forgot to mention the viable training option you desire should already be in place. I do my manual blackout recovery in conjunction with the emergency generator test. The only way that thing kicks on is if you’re in the dark and if it stays on longer than a minute or two the computer has failed to recover. Then someone better be standing their ready to flip switches, push buttons and cycle breakers.[/QUOTE]
When you have a fully electronic diesel that is fully automated, its going to be the eto that gets it running in an emergency, not the guy that changes the oil imho and what I have seen in practice.
Edit-- when in fault that is.