Need inspiration for bachelorproject

Professional Mariner Forum
1

Good day,

I am a student at Svendborg International Maritime Academy in Denmark - at the moment i am doing my final seapractice
in the Torm tankers(Deck cadet). When I return end of beginning of September i will have to take my final courses and write a bachelorassignment
before i complete my education and start as a 3rd mate in Torm.

I am looking for a interesting theme/problem, which relates to the maritime world and i hope to find some inspiration here. I am aiming to find
something where there are several reliable sources and information in general is available. I can give examples of what fellow students have wroten about before:

  • Improvement of I.G. system
  • Efficiency of Vapur Recovery System
  • Rest hours
  • Noise & Vibrations affecting work and living enviroment
  • Food
  • Piracy

What i need is a concrete problem or something that i believe needs improvement. I have tried to make a brainstorm for my self and i find these topics of interest:

  • Radar X and S-band; Reliability of radars, errors and other problems

  • Full ECDIS versus ordinary Paper charts (pros and cons)

  • GMDSS equipment - is there need for improvement?

  • Safety when mooring/unmooring - can there be done anything to get a safer work enviroment here?

  • Rest hours - My experiences show, that crews are sliced down to minimum - this is especially hard, when trading in West-Africa regions with piracy wathc, etc. What can be done?

  • Garbage management and de-slopping/sludging - Why is it so expensive to get rid of garbage and sludge/residues in port? This motivates everybody to throw garbage overbord. What can be done?

  • General maintenace - my experiences from Torm show that the “Life cycle costs/Life cycle profits” concept is not really applied when ordering new buildings or spare parts. They just order the cheapest they can get.
    This results in extra maintenace, extra manhours and even extra crew when things go really bad. I don´t believe this is profitable. I also believe that maintenance should not only apply in general for the entire fleet, but one should also look at, if it is a time charter or a voyage charter. I dont know if my assumptions about this is right, but if i got a time charter for 5 years trading only between two ports in the Mexican Gulf i would probably buy
    a cheap ship and keep maintenance costs low to get more profits. On the other hand if i want to find cargoes my self and don´t have a fixed charter, i also don´t have a fixed income. So maybe then i should aim to buy a quiality new-building, as I don´t know if i start earning money after 5, 10 or maybe 20 years.

The last topic about maintenance i find quite interesting - i only don´t know if it is too complicated and if i can get any data from Companies and Manufacturers. I am also very interested about
the enviromental topic - I mean pollution from ship´s is still a great issue and i think, that if recovery facilities in port weren´t that expensive or for free, it might motivate everybody not to throw garbage/residues overboard.

I hope somebody can come with some good input and guide me to an interesting topic. I am open for any suggestion.

Thanks in advance.

Brgds,

Stefan

2

Some good topics and a tough choice. Choose one that you have a particular interest in. That will make the project much easier to push through.

Of your projects, There are two that I would like to write about - Piracy and on’board management of solid waste. The waste paper could get into a review of the types of generated wastes, environmental implication of improper disposal at sea, training stragegies, BMP’s, and technologies for onboat treatment or sequestration of wastes. This could be a good paper.

Piracy is another hot topic where you could discuss costs, long term affect on the industry, BMP’s, legal implication of arming merchant vessels, non-lethal strategies for deterrance and a table of the past 5 year piracy incidents and how they were resolved.

Good luck.

3

Hello Stefan. I know you are a studious young man with a serious question for the forum but I am a bored old man who likes to crack wise and cannot resist any good opportunity to do so, so here are my suggestions for subjects to use in your paper:

Communications: GMDSS…really, haven’t we wasted enough time on this already?

Communications: the history of the Filippino monkey and who is he really?

Piracy: what is the most effective calibre and rate of fire?

Pollution: effectively hiding your “Magic Pipe” from Port State Inspectors

Maritime Law…how to bring your foreign offshore MPSV to work in the US Gulf and keep the foreign crew onboard?

Maritime Labor: 12 tips for masters to beat a downtrodden crew and extract every last drop of sweat from them

Maritime Labor: 12 tricks for chief mates to use to deny overtime pay

Maritime Management: strategies in using backroom deals to assist the Maritime Unions to “see it from the shipowner’s point of view”.

Safety Management: ISM…the effectiveness of the micro SMS. Does it really require 1000 sheets of paper in three binders to prevent accidents at sea?

Navigation: logic behind the scrapping all of the existing “little rules” of the road in favor of just one grand unifying “big vessel rule”?

Watchkeeping: is “heavy metal” ok to listen to on the midwatch as long as you don’t wake the captain?

Watchkeeping: blood caffeine levels and extreme “Red Bull” use at sea on coastal tankships…is it a hidden timebomb?

Technology: The robot DPO…removing the human element entirely

I hope these suggestions help and good studies to you cadet

btw…I have been the the Maersk Training Center in Svendborg. A very charming harbortown. You should get aboard with Maersk Drilling or Maersk Contractors. They are top rate and you can go very far there!

4

[QUOTE=SAW;70592]- Garbage management and de-slopping/sludging - Why is it so expensive to get rid of garbage and sludge/residues in port?
the enviromental topic - I mean pollution from ship´s is still a great issue and i think, that if recovery facilities in port weren´t that expensive or for free, it might motivate everybody not to throw garbage/residues overboard.[/QUOTE]

Some ports in Europe change garbage fees regardless if you dispose of garbage in that port or not. That reduces the motivation to dispose of it at sea.

K.C.

5

Dynamic Positioning. Perhaps, how to address the need for more opportunities to obtain DP seatime, or to reduce the seatime requirements for initial certification.

6

Manning standards: Do ships have a sufficient number of crew to safely operate? Employers want to have the minimum number and at what point does it jeopardize safety?