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Know Your Team: Consider the Experience of Everyone on the Bridge

🕑 5 min read words Leadership • Navigation • Bridge-resource-management

Module 5 of 6 · about fifteen minutes
Learning outcome: Take account of who is on the bridge, how long they have worked together and what they know of this ship and this job.
Start: Bridge resource management in six short modules

The Idea

A team is not the sum of its certificates. Two excellent officers who have never worked together, on a ship neither knows, in an operation neither has done, are a new team. The principle asks you to consider the experience of the team and plan around it: pair, brief, supervise, and slow down.

The Case

IMCA SF 03/24. The OOW was experienced but new to the vessel; the Captain was new too; so the bridge team had not worked together long. IMCA recommended stronger vetting and re-checking competence and suitability before a project starts.

IMCA SF 01/24. The workboat crew were relatively new to the wind farm and still learning local practices and a new contract.

Matthew Flinders III. The rudders locked hard to port and the vessel spent eight hours without full steering control, with a backup system the crew had not been trained to use. See the case.

DP. IMCA’s code of practice on key DP personnel includes DP vessel and mission familiarisation with example checklists, and IMCA publishes guidance on initial and refresher familiarisation of vessel crews.

Why This Principle Exists

A certificate tells you what someone has been trained and assessed to do. It does not tell you whether they know this ship, this area, this operation, or the people they are standing next to. The fifth principle asks a bridge leader to consider the experience of the team and then plan around it. This is a different habit from checking certificates: it is asking, each time, “who is actually on this bridge and what do they not know yet?”

Six Kinds Of Experience

Experience is not one number. A team may be strong on some and thin on others at the same moment.

Kind	Question	Why it matters
This ship	How long have they sailed in her?	Handling, quirks, where controls are, which alarms nuisance and which matter
This area	Have they worked or transited here before?	Local traffic patterns, tides, reporting, pilotage habits
This operation	Have they done this specific job before?	A towed survey, a wind farm transfer, a DP approach or an STS transfer is not an ordinary passage
Each other	How long have they worked together?	How they communicate, who speaks up, what is assumed
Language and culture	Do they share a working language and norms about challenging?	Read-backs, respect for rank, willingness to interrupt
Condition today	How rested, how well, how recently back from leave?	Fatigue, return from a long break, an unfamiliar rotation

Planning Around Experience

There are five practical levers. Use as many as the situation needs.

Pair. Put a new person with an experienced one for the busy phases, and say that is the plan.
Brief to the least experienced. The brief is for the person who knows least, not the one who knows most.
Supervise. Decide in advance how closely a new person will be watched and what they may do alone.
Slow down. More margin, earlier decisions and more distance, because a new team is slower and less able to absorb surprises.
Limit the task. Choose a less demanding operation until the team is ready, or build up with a trial run.

None of these implies a lack of trust. They are what trust looks like when you cannot see inside someone’s head.

What The Cases Show

IMCA SF 03/24. An OOW new to the vessel and its handling with a tow, a Captain also new, and a bridge team that had not worked together long. IMCA recommended stronger vetting and a re-check of competence and suitability before a project starts.
IMCA SF 01/24. A crew still learning local practice and a new contract, with paperwork and training running on the bridge at the same time.
Matthew Flinders III. A backup steering system the crew had not been trained to use. The question is not whether it was fitted. It is whether the people on the bridge could use it.

Getting New People Up To Speed

A short, structured familiarisation is worth more than a long, informal one. Items worth covering on the bridge, in the first day:

Where the controls, alarms and emergency switches are, and what each alarm means in this ship’s system.
Handling at slow speed, with a tow, in wind, with the actual loading.
Backup systems: how to change over, how to take manual control, and a practice.
Local procedures: reporting, pilotage, traffic schemes, safety zones.
The ship’s own bridge routines: how handovers are done, who holds the lookout, what triggers a call to the Master.
Who to ask, and a statement that questions are expected.

For DP, IMCA’s code of practice for key DP personnel includes DP vessel and mission familiarisation with example checklists, and IMCA also publishes guidance on familiarisation for vessel crews.

The New Person’s Side

If you are the new one, you are part of the plan too. It helps to say it. “This is my first time on this ship. I would like to be told when something is different from other ships.” Ask for a walk through the backup systems. Say when you are unsure. The cost of being thought slow for an hour is small. The cost of an unspoken gap is not.

Illustrative scenario (not a real incident): Two new faces on a survey vessel

A survey vessel has just changed both its Captain and one of its OOWs after a crew change. The next job is a towed survey inside a wind farm with a closest-approach line to be held between turbines. The previous Captain is on the beach. The new OOW has seagoing experience on larger vessels, none with a tow. The Captain has not yet seen the ship in this configuration.

Pause and decide at each step before reading on:

List the six kinds of experience for this team. Where is each one thin?
What pairing, brief and supervision would you set for the first line?
The OOW says they are comfortable. How do you test that without insulting them?
What will make you stop the job, and who will say so?

Debrief. A sound plan has the new OOW doing the first line with the Captain close, a brief that covers the vessel’s handling with the tow, a trial line away from the turbines, and an agreed trigger (a distance or an offset) at which the job pauses. It also treats the Captain’s newness as a factor: nobody on that bridge has long experience of the ship in this configuration.

Check Your Own Bridge

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

Do we ask who is new to the ship, the area and the job before every operation?
Do we brief to the least experienced person present?
Is there a written familiarisation list for the bridge?
Do our new joiners know they are expected to ask?
Do we change the plan when the team changes?

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.

When did you last start a job with a team that had never done it together?
What would you have changed in the plan if you had written the six kinds of experience down?
What is the first thing you ask a new person to show you?

Key Takeaways

Certificates are not experience of this ship, this area or this job.
Six kinds of experience: ship, area, operation, each other, language, condition today.
Pair, brief to the least experienced, supervise, slow down, limit the task.
A structured first-day familiarisation beats a vague one.
A new team needs more margin, not the same plan.

Try This On Your Next Watch

Draw a table of everyone on your next watch: how long on this ship, how long in this area, how long in this operation. Mark anyone who is new to any of the three. For each, write one thing you will do differently in the brief or the pairing.

Test Your Knowledge

Think you've got this covered? Put it to the test in Crew Connect's free Knowledge Checker — try a quick leadership round and see how you score.