Decision Simulator

DP: Watch What You Are Pressing - From Console to Manual Control

DP2 vessel (anonymised)
DP2 offshore wind vessel · Offshore wind farm · Published October 2026
Source: IMCA DPE 03/26

14Decision Points 4Possible Outcomes —Avg. Play Time

The Situation

You are the Master of a DP2 vessel working at an offshore wind farm. This scenario takes you through the whole task of an approach to a foundation: the console and alarm planning, the ASOG review, the alarm protocol, the status check and the approach itself. Your earlier choices carry forward. It is a training reconstruction based on IMCA bulletin DPE 03/26; the scenario says where it goes beyond the bulletin.

The Lesson

The controls are a chain: review the console layout, put the real risk in the ASOG, agree who acknowledges alarms, check the status before the approach, and take manual control as soon as the DP station loses the thrusters.

Human Element

A critical control beside a routine one, no guard, no protocol for who touches the console during an alarm, and a DP station that gave no warning when thruster control was lost. Five linked stages, then a fast decision.

Try the First Decision

PLANNING AND PREPARATION. You are the Master of a DP2 vessel working at an offshore wind farm, moving between monopile foundations with seven of eight thrusters and four of five generators online. Wind is 16 knots, current 1.2 knots, visibility good. The bridge-wing control panel has an Alarm Acknowledge pushbutton and, directly beside it, a Backup Mode selector that is not guarded. How do you plan the bridge for the approach?

A. Walk the console with the team before the approach. Identify controls whose consequence is severe and that sit beside controls used every day, ask for a cover or guard on the Backup Mode selector, and agree that only one named person acknowledges alarms.
B. Carry on. The console has always been like this and nothing has happened before.

This is a preview — the full scenario branches from here based on what you choose, with real consequences and a debrief at the end.

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