Seven IMCA Safety Flashes About the Bridge Team: Alarms, Wind Farms, a Quiet Watch and a Transfer Nobody Stopped

Why Read Safety Flashes About The Bridge

IMCA’s Safety Flashes are short, anonymised and published for free. Most are about equipment and lifting. A handful are about something harder to engineer: how the people on the bridge divide the work, talk to each other and decide when to stop. We picked seven. Bridge resource management is usually described in terms of principles: allocating resources, communicating, assertiveness and leadership, situational awareness, and the experience of the team. Each flash below shows one of them failing, or working.

SF 03/24: A New OOW And A New Captain

During survey operations a chartered vessel entered a wind turbine safety zone twice while trying to achieve the closest approach line. The first breach was handled on board with a safety stand down; after the second, the vessel was immediately stood down and told to leave the site until safe controls were agreed with the client.

IMCA lists the causes. 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 experienced, but new to this vessel and did not know its slow-speed handling while towing equipment. The Captain was also new, so the bridge team had not worked together long. The OOW did not tell the Captain when control of the vessel was lost. The team did not fully appreciate the risk of close-quarters navigation near an offshore structure, standing orders were not followed, and the bridge toolbox talk at shift change was not properly done.

Its recommendations: strengthen bridge watchkeeping standards and route planning for close-quarters work; give the shift-change toolbox talk and handover more time and detail on confidence, awareness, communication and contingency scenarios; and strengthen the vetting of crew competence and suitability, both by the member and the charter company, and again before a project starts.

SF 01/24: The Chart Table Is Not A Lookout

A workboat transferring two teams to two wind turbines was steered slowly between the turbines by its master, who also did paperwork at the chart table. Absorbed in the work and losing track of time, he did not keep a proper lookout. The boat, travelling at about 5 knots with the autopilot off (company orders did not allow it in wind farms), slowly turned to starboard and its bow struck one of the towers. One crew member suffered two broken ribs. The mate was on the aft deck doing familiarisation training and the crew member was busy elsewhere. The crew were relatively new to the wind farm.

The lessons from the MAIB: if paperwork must be done, someone else keeps the lookout; use all the instruments (ECDIS, rate-of-turn indicator, gyro) and not only the view through the window; and look at the administrative burden and whether crew can give feedback on it without fear of reprisal.

SF 21/22: The Quiet Watch

A towing vessel with a large deck barge grounded on a shoal at about 0125 with the Mate on watch. Both main engines shut down and could not be restarted, both ducted propellers were badly damaged, and the vessel was out of service for ten weeks at a cost of more than USD 950,000. The Mate had fallen asleep in his chair after a disrupted sleep pattern and extra work the night before, in very calm seas. He had worked 13.5 hours in the 24 before the watch and just over 29 in the 48 before. Work and rest logs appeared to be filled in once a week and the hours did not vary. No ECDIS alarm had been set for the course change and no depth contour alarms were set, though the Mate knew how.

The lessons from the American P&I Club: do not ignore rest requirements for operational reasons except in emergencies; record work and rest honestly; if you struggle to stay awake, take action (stand up, move around, call a deckhand, call the Master); and set and use ECDIS alarms.

SF 17/26: Two Bridges, No Stop

During a materials transfer between two vessels moored alongside, weather and sea conditions worsened quickly. One vessel lost heading and position and drifted into the other. The cargo sling was still connected, so neither could move away, and they touched at the sterns. IMCA lists continuing past safe limits, neither master using their authority to suspend operations, ineffective BRM with poor shared situational awareness and slow joint decision-making between the two bridges, and a risk assessment with no measurable weather limits. See the guide on stop-work authority.

What Runs Through All Seven

• The team was thin, or new, or distracted. The Captain and the OOW were new to the vessel and each other. The master was at the chart table. The mate was doing training on the aft deck.
• Nobody said what they saw. The OOW did not call the Captain when he lost control. The tow’s slow-speed handling was not discussed.
• The limits were not written as numbers. The risk assessment for the transfer had no weather triggers. The wind farm drift had no distance to the tower at which someone would act.
• Tools were available and not used. The ECDIS alarms. The rate-of-turn indicator. The panel that froze.
• Where it worked, a person said ‘no’ and the company backed them. SF 24/20.

Try the Decision Simulator

Take SF 03/24 as the Captain: the team familiarisation, the risk assessment for the approach, the standing orders, the shift-change brief and the moment the OOW reports the vessel is not responding. Work through it in the free Decision Simulator. It is a training reconstruction.

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Related Reading

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• Hand over control, check the lever
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