Storm Avoidance - Crew calling the DPA

Agree. There are superficial comparisons but substantial differences.

From the NTSB report on “El Faro”. P162 pre incident. The perfect setup for a one man accident.

“ Monitoring Ships at Sea. TOTE did not have a policy for monitoring commercial vessels at sea. The vice president of marine operations told the marine board that he did not know if there was anyone in the organization who “may actually know where the ship is . . . through some kind of computer tracking system or some alternate means of communication.” The director of marine services and safety testified that the vessel’s port engineer was responsible for monitoring departure messages, arrival messages, and noon reports. El Faro’s port engineer said he believed he saw El Faro’s noon position report for September 30, 2015. When asked who reviewed the position reports so that the company could track a vessel’s position at any time, the port engineer said, “I don’t believe anyone does that, sir.”
The manager of safety and operations stated that storms were “not necessarily” plotted against a ship’s position but that “we know the position at times based on their noon position.” (The last noon report of El Faro reported its position 18 hours before it lost propulsion.) The manager testified that no one in the company was tasked with monitoring tropical weather. He also stated that some of the ships TOTE managed for other companies had an online weather-routing system that tracked both ship and storm positions.
Under the company’s SMS, the captain was responsible for monitoring the weather along the vessel’s intended track and for taking action to prevent excessive damage to the vessel from heavy weather. The captain was also required to advise shoreside management of speed reductions or course changes due to adverse weather.”

NTSB report on “El Faro” P86.

“During the accident voyage, the mates and ABs discussed their concerns about the weather and the ship’s route on the bridge, where they were recorded by the VDR. The conversations were not repeated in the captain’s presence. After the captain went to his stateroom about 2000 on September 30, not to reappear on the VDR recording until 0409 the next morning, the third mate called him twice about the forecast and suggested making a course change to the south, which the captain did not agree to. While the second mate was on watch, she plotted a new route, based on weather information from Sat-C. She called the captain about 0120 and in a conversation that was not clear on the VDR recording, suggested a course change to the south that was not accepted by the captain. The day before, the second mate had sent a message to her mother saying that the ship was heading “straight into” the hurricane. Shortly before 0400 on October 1, she sent emails to her mother and a friend with essentially the same message.
At 0503, the captain stated that he had conflicting reports about the location of the center of the storm. The captain was comparing two reports of different types containing forecasts from different times. The first was the 0500 Sat-C report from the National Hurricane Center, which was a text copy of the current forecast. The second was the BVS report issued at 2300 the previous evening. That report was a graphic depiction of the National Hurricane Center forecast from 1700 on September 30 (6 hours earlier). By the time the report was downloaded at 0503, the information was about 12 hours old. The captain repeatedly stated, however, that they were “on the back side” of the storm or would be soon.
All members of the bridge team, except the captain, completed BRM training in 2013. The company was not required to send crewmembers to BRM training, and the Coast Guard does not require any BRM recurrent training. With recurrent training, all officers would have a unified understanding of expectations with regard to effective communication, assertiveness, and working as a well-organized and competent team.”

p165. There was no cellular network coverage in the accident area so the crew members could only use the bridge phone with the Master’s permission.

“ TOTE provided Tunstall Americas (the contracting company for the call center) with information to help its employees take emergency calls. For example, when a call came in for the emergency response team, operators were instructed to remain on the line until they were sure the call was taken by a TOTE representative. Specific instructions were listed on the operator’s computer screen, similar to a checklist.
Crewmembers were directed to contact the DP if they had safety concerns. The DP’s phone number was posted throughout the ship, but the only shipboard phone the crew could access was on the bridge, and permission to use the phone was at the captain’s discretion. Crewmembers were not prohibited from having their own cell phones or satellite phones. In addition to the DP’s phone number, a flyer for an online reporting tool called “Speak Up” was posted on the ship. The flyer listed a link to a company hotline where crewmembers could access “Speak Up.”

Automobiles, ships and aircraft all reduce collisions using the concept of separation . Automobiles on the Interstate Highway System use divided highways separated by a median strip. Vessel Traffic Systems use a Separation Zone. Air Traffic Control uses different flight paths / altitudes to separate traffic.

The concept of separation is an attribute of the system used to reduce collisions and as a concept it is independent of the mode of transport.

Five years later, the owners of the “Gulf Livestock 1” have learnt nothing from the lessons post “El Faro” and 41 innocent seafarers lose their lives. Additionally, tracking capability was far improved over 2015.
The vessel had questionable loaded stability, which was evident in the posted video and it was navigated into the eye of a storm.
Disgraceful.

A concept more relevant to this thread:

Mitigated speech is a linguistic term describing deferential or indirect speech inherent in communication between individuals of perceived High Power Distance

Hospital operating rooms, aircraft cockpits and ship wheelhouses are three places where there is a perception of high power distance.

As with the concept of separation, mitigated speech is an attribute of human behavior and is independent of the mode of transport.

High power distance is the greatest supporter and ally of the one man accident. I have seen it first hand whilst Piloting vessels with mixed nationality bridge teams. The Korean/Filipino mix was almost poisonous and the PD was fathomless. Unfortunately, there was always perceived PD between myself and the Master as he/she was entering a port which intimidated them and they became deferential which did not support challenge/response.
Over 22 years and in excess of 5000 Pilotages I was challenged twice. I should have been challenged more often. That is not a reflection of my ability but a reflection of the failure of BRM principles on the bridge of a commercial vessel.

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WHOA, backup the horse. This brah goes ahead and puts me on ignore because I make the claim that BRM/ERM is bogus and not used and hasn’t changed anything. And then tells stories proving exactly my point.

Again, both these comments are due to lack of variety in your experience. Presuming your entire professional carrier has been working only in the marine/shipping world, you will fight to do death how “we are different” because you haven’t been enough other places to see the massive similarities.

Safety systems, conquering poor human behavior (human factor systems), and figuring out how to get the idiot making bad decisions to not make bad decisions is a difficult problem that every industry faces.

People have been using the concepts of BRM for thousands of years. I’ve seen it used in wheelhouses a long time before anyone heard of or used the term.

The concepts and underlying principles, yes, used forever. Also, the same principles that form CRM in airliners. But the shipping industry has packaged it into a buzzword laden powerpoint presentation 3 day class and claims it fixes all issues…and that is what I am calling bogus.

Yeah, but I don’t give a shit about buzzwords or powerpoint.

When I worked with Captain Doug on the Aleutian freighter he was often a bit of a prick. But the couple times during an approach when I said I thought we were going too fast he just grunted and pulled the throttles back.

Later sailing deep-sea I’d say something but the captain would tell me it was too early to slow down and then wait 60 seconds and then give me an order to drop the EOT a bell,. As captain I solved the problem by marking the slowdown point on the chart. That way the mate doesn’t have tell me I’m going too fast, just has to say we’ve reached the slow-down point.

I do it that way because it works, what the unions or the regulators think about it is irrelevant.

Here you go fool. One last response. This was a reply to you on 9.11.22.

What do you not understand about the following words…………

“ATTEMPTING TO APPLY THIS DOCTRINE TO THE MARITIME FIELD WAS ALWAYS BOUND FOR FAILURE. WE ALL KNOW THAT”

That is your opinion. And this is why you will never lead any meaningful change in this industry. You are low info. You prefer to attack other that refuse to accept the status quo instead of brainstorm better ways to improve the system.

Shipping isn’t special. Medicine isn’t special. Driving busses isn’t special. Cooking food isn’t special. Going to the moon isn’t special. All benefit from order, processes, procedures, and smart people finding ways to improve things. But keep on being you and “muh marine environment be super special!”

Instead, the reason marine world is backwards is because companies are A) too cheap to improve and B) full of closed minded underpaid dumb individuals in the office to provide real leadership to make improvements. What they should do is hire some retired chief pilots from the airlines that owned the procedure making process and pick their brains to improve their maritime operations.

Elon Musk bought twitter and immediately laid of 50%+ of the staff. All the naysayers (you) said “OMG, company will crash”. Still hasn’t crashed, and now does the task better with half the staff. If Musk bought a few shipping companies, I’m sure you’d say he’d fail and couldn’t improve anything because apples to kanagaroos.

No, this is low information.

“ WHOA, backup the horse. This brah goes ahead and puts me on ignore because I make the claim that BRM/ERM is bogus and not used and hasn’t changed anything. And then tells stories proving exactly my point.”

Exactly what have you done in the Engineroom to improve human factors?How many communications have you had with shoreside management regarding the failure of BRM/ERM? How many BRM/ERM courses have you attended? If you have not attended any courses, why have you not insisted upon it?

Or are you just as complicit as the rest of us?

You make big claims about the great success of CRM and the efficacy of aviation processes. Unfortunately, planes continue to crash and people continue to die owing to human factors. Aviation companies are now putting a toe in the water and discussing the prospect of going down to a single Pilot which implies that the technology is pretty impressive. Would not have made any difference in the case of the Germanwings disaster with 150 souls gone. One maniac behind the sticks is all you need. Nor in the case of MA Flight 370 with 227 souls lost which we are still looking for.

Read this and educate yourself.

And for the record, you started the attack ……not me.

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Well it was a nice thread while it lasted

Suddenly more entertaining. Just hope facts and not personal attacks prevail.

My apologies for my lack of temperance ladies/gentlemen. I have said as much as I need to on this thread topic.

A post was split to a new topic: Foundations of Bridge Resource Management