Keith Wallis, Hong Kong – Monday 10 November 2008
MANDATORY simulator training should be introduced for deck and engine room staff to improve operational standards and efficiency, according to the head of a leading ship management company.
Peter Cremers, Anglo Eastern Group chief executive, said the simulator training would overcome the problem that there was not enough time to study on board given the restrictions of operating modern vessels.
He thought the lack of time to learn on board meant officers had less time to prepare for emergencies.
Mr Cremers, who is also the current chairman of the Hong Kong Shipowners’ Association, pointed out that the career path from cadet to master had been reduced to six years. Consequently seafarers did not have the time to build experience to handle different situations.
As a result, the shipping sector should use ideas from the airline industry to improve safety and operational standards.
The use of mandatory simulator training, which seafarers including masters had to pass rather than just attend, was one initiative. Mr Cremers said this requalification should be held every two years.
He said cheating, whether ‘flogging the log’ or falsifying log entries to cover oil pollution should become a “thing of the past” . Mr Cremers said the falsification of entries covering pollution were “most of the time a bigger, or the only, crime than the pollution itself.
Flogging the log, either by tampering with speed and consumption figures, failing to register stoppages at sea or tampering with time and the position of arrivals, should also be outlawed.
“While it may be argued that these are the normal procedures of commercial handling of counter party contractual terms, how can one keep on making the distinction between was is criminal and what is not.
How long do we still have to pretend that cheating a counter party on purpose is part of a normal way to conduct business,” he said.
Mr Cremers also thought ship maintenance should not be driven by the commercial conditions at the time and instead should be linked to the 25-year design life of the ship. He said that if the ship is designed for 25-years service then owners or operators should “develop a maintenance programme for 25 years” as part of a move to disconnect maintenance from commercial or operational pressure.
He said it was a refrain from owners that when the market was high there was no time for maintenance, but when the market was low there was no money for maintenance. Mr Cremers thought all maintenance programmes should come from the original manufacturers, including the newbuilding yard, using a common IT platform.
Finally, Mr Cremers thought seafarers and ship managers should be adequately rewarded for the responsibility of looking after a ship. For shipmanagers this should involve a basic management fee plus an additional payment in accordance with meeting clearly defined performance indicators.