Keep the Picture: Situational Awareness on the Bridge

The Idea

Awareness has three levels: perceiving the elements, understanding what they mean together, and projecting what happens next. Teams need a shared picture. See the guide on situational awareness in three levels.

The Case

IMCA SF 03/24. A survey vessel entered a turbine safety zone twice while trying to line up the closest approach line. The OOW lost situational awareness and turned to port when he should have turned to starboard given the north-to-south tidal set. He was new to the vessel and did not know how it handled at slow speed while towing. The Captain, also new, was not told control had been lost.

Meshka. A first transit of the Öresund for the vessel and crew; the traffic centre noticed her drifting outside the lane before she grounded in three metres of water. See the case.

Why This Principle Exists

Nearly every grounding or collision investigation reaches the same point: at some moment a person on the bridge held a picture of the situation that no longer matched the real one. The picture was usually confident. The ship was not where they thought, the other vessel was not doing what they assumed, or the plan had stopped fitting the conditions. Situational awareness is not a talent. It is a set of habits that keep the picture honest.

The Three Levels, On A Bridge

Most people can report what they see. Fewer can say what it will be in ten minutes. That third level is where plans get changed in time.

What Wears Awareness Down

• Fixation. Everything is on one display, one target or one task, while the rest of the picture moves on.
• Interruption. A call, a question, an alarm. When you return you assume nothing changed.
• Single-source reliance. One display, one GPS, one chart. If it is wrong, nothing tells you.
• Assumption. “The pilot knows”, “the other ship will give way”, “it is always fine here”.
• Routine and complacency. The hundredth identical approach.
• Workload and fatigue. At either extreme, the scan narrows.
• Unfamiliarity. A new ship, a new area, a new mode on the console.
• Poor sharing. One person holds the picture and does not say it.

Habits That Keep The Picture Honest

1. Scan on a schedule, not when you feel like it: outside, radar, ECDIS, instruments, back outside.
2. Cross-check independent sources. Visual against radar, radar against ECDIS, ECDIS against depth.
3. Say the picture aloud at a fixed time. “In ten minutes we will be abeam the buoy with the tide setting us toward the shoal.” Then check it.
4. Ask the three questions at every change: What is happening? What has changed? What happens next?
5. Treat surprises as signals. A target that behaves oddly or a depth that is not as charted is information about your model, not noise.
6. Re-orient after every interruption. “I was away for two minutes. What has changed?”
7. Call out the bad news early. A modest alert that is wrong costs a minute; silence that is wrong costs the ship.

When You Realise You Have Lost The Picture

Almost everyone experiences it: a moment where the ship, the chart and the radar do not agree and you do not know why. The wrong response is to keep going while working it out. A safe response is a short sequence:

1. Stop adding risk. Slow, hold, or move to open water if you can.
2. Say it. “I have lost the picture.” Tell the Master and the team.
3. Rebuild from fixed points. Position by an independent method: a visual bearing, a radar range, a sounding.
4. Ask the team what they see.
5. Resume only when two sources agree and someone else has confirmed it.

Saying it is the hard step. A team that treats “I have lost the picture” as a normal, respected statement is much safer than one that expects people to hide it.

Sharing The Picture Across The Team

A team has a shared picture only if the parts are spoken. Useful routines:

• The pre-arrival and pre-departure brief, with the plan, the threats and what each person watches.
• The running commentary during close work: positions, distances, set, intentions.
• The handover with the state, not only the story (see Module 2).
• The call-out of changes: “Target now steady bearing.” “Wind has backed to the south-west.”
• The joint operation brief where two vessels each carry their own picture of the same job.

IMCA SF 17/26 notes poor shared situational awareness between two bridges in a joint operation. Two competent bridges do not automatically have one picture.

Pause and decide at each step before reading on:

1. What is your Level 1, 2 and 3 picture right now? Say each in a sentence.
2. The lookout has left. Who has the lookout until they come back?
3. You check and the cross-track error is 40 m and increasing. What does that tell you about the next ten minutes?
4. The ECDIS shows the ship still inside the channel; the visual bearing of the next buoy looks different from the radar. What do you do?

Debrief. A good answer includes a stated projection (“in ten minutes we are outside the channel unless we correct”), a named person on the lookout before the coffee break, a correction, and a call to the Master because two sources disagree. The point is to catch the drift at 40 m rather than at the buoy.

Check Your Own Bridge

Answer honestly. Any ‘no’ or ‘not sure’ is something to fix, not something to hide.

• Do I give a spoken projection on every watch, and do I check it?
• Do I re-orient after every interruption?
• Do I have an independent source for my position that I use on purpose?
• Would I say “I have lost the picture” out loud, and would it be respected?
• Is there anything I switch off or silence that I should be using?

Questions For A Team Discussion

Use these in a pre-departure brief, at a safety meeting, or over a coffee in the middle of the night watch.

1. When did you last hold a confident picture that turned out to be wrong? What told you?
2. Which of the eight awareness killers affect you most on a quiet night?
3. What would be different if your team gave a spoken projection every thirty minutes?

Key Takeaways

• Perceive, comprehend, project: the third level is the one that changes plans in time.
• Interruption, fixation and a single source are the usual causes of a wrong picture.
• Say the picture aloud and check it.
• If you lose the picture, stop adding risk, say so, and rebuild from independent fixes.
• Two competent bridges do not automatically share one picture.

Try This On Your Next Watch

Every watch, at a fixed time, say aloud one sentence that starts ‘In ten minutes we will be…’ Check it ten minutes later. Note when you were wrong, and why.

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Related Reading

• Situational awareness in three levels
• Meshka

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