New Industry Guidance on Onboard Safety Familiarisation — and Why It's Not the Same Thing as a Handover

New Guidance, Three Organisations, One Clear Distinction

Nautilus International, the RMT, and the UK Chamber of Shipping — through the National Maritime Occupational Health and Safety Committee — have jointly published Safety Familiarisation: Guidelines to Shipping Companies, high-level guidance setting recommended minimum standards for how shipping companies deliver onboard safety familiarisation. It's not new law — it doesn't replace STCW, MLC 2006, or the Code of Safe Working Practices (CoSWP) — but it does something practically useful: it draws a clear line between two things that get conflated on a lot of vessels.

Familiarisation Is Not the Same Thing as Handover

The guidance is explicit about this, and it's worth sitting with: handover is the transfer of responsibilities, ongoing tasks, and operational knowledge from the off-signing crew member to the incoming one. Familiarisation is an introduction to the ship itself — its layout, equipment, safety procedures, and company policies. A thorough handover conversation about current jobs and priorities is not a substitute for a structured safety familiarisation, and the guidance recommends this distinction be reflected explicitly in a vessel's SMS, not left to blur together in practice.

The Legal Basis Isn't New — But It's Rarely Laid Out This Clearly

• STCW Regulation I/14 makes companies responsible for ensuring seafarers are familiarised with their specific duties and all ship-specific arrangements. Regulation VI/1 mandates safety familiarisation before assignment to shipboard duties.
• STCW Section A-VI/1 spells out exactly what general familiarisation must cover before anyone starts duties: communicating on elementary safety matters and understanding safety signs/alarms; knowing what to do if someone falls overboard, if fire or smoke is detected, or if the fire/abandon ship alarm sounds; identifying muster/embarkation stations and escape routes; locating and donning lifejackets; raising the alarm and basic use of portable fire extinguishers; taking immediate action on an accident or medical emergency; and operating the ship's fire, weathertight, and watertight doors.
• MLC 2006 Regulation 1.3 prohibits a seafarer working on a ship unless they've successfully completed personal safety training. Standard A4.3 requires occupational safety and health programmes to include seafarer training and instruction — and there's no minimum tonnage threshold for MLC's application.
• CoSWP Section 2 covers the design of standard induction programmes tailored to each vessel's specific needs.

What the New Guidance Actually Adds

Beyond restating the legal minimum, the guidance sets out practical structure most SMS documents leave vague:

• Depth should scale with rank and role — higher-ranking officers and those with more critical safety roles warrant more extensive familiarisation, not the same fixed programme for everyone.
• Prior experience reduces intensity, never eliminates the requirement — even a crew member with extensive experience on a sister ship must still complete vessel-specific induction.
• Content should include: general safety procedures (communication protocols, PPE, hazard/near-miss reporting, the ship's mobile phone rules, stop work authority, permit to work systems, enclosed and dangerous space entry); emergency procedures (fire detection/alarm/firefighting/evacuation, with practical drills where port operations allow; abandon ship protocols including LSA location and use); ship layout via an accompanied tour; company policies including the SMS reporting structure; and MARPOL-based environmental procedures covering hazardous materials, spill response, and waste/garbage handling.
• A named Designated Manager for familiarisation — typically the ship's Safety Officer — is responsible for ensuring every crew member actually completes familiarisation and is confirmed ready for duty, not just handed a folder to read.
• Monitoring isn't optional — regular assessment of familiarisation effectiveness (tests, drills, performance evaluation), reviewed by the Ship's Safety Representatives and Safety Committee, with feedback mechanisms (including surveys and suggestion boxes) feeding back into continuous improvement of the programme itself.

Why This Is Worth Reading in Full, Not Just Summarising

Every point above maps to a real STCW/MLC/CoSWP clause — the guidance's real value is in bringing the scattered legal requirements together into one practical structure a Safety Officer can actually build a programme from, including the documentation trail (date, content covered, confirmation of understanding) that proves it happened. If your vessel's SMS currently treats familiarisation as "part of the handover conversation," this guidance is a direct, citable basis for separating the two.

Building or Reviewing Your Familiarisation Programme

Turning this guidance into an actual documented programme — content, assessment, records — is real work on top of an already stretched Safety Officer's workload. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on your current familiarisation programme, or want help building one from scratch, get in touch at hello@crew-connect.net — we're happy to talk through what a review or build-out could look like for your fleet.

Test Your Knowledge

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

Related Reading

• SEAHAKE — what happens when procedure is followed correctly, and equipment fails anyway