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Accidents have happened in the past and will happen in the future. The main objective of loss prevention is to reduce the number of accidents and to minimise the consequences of the accidents and thus the costs, by analysing any event that might develop into an accidental situation if left alone.
Ingemar Pålsson, Nordic Loss Prevention Manager at Codan/Trygg-Hansa Marine has a substantial experience from the analytic work surrounding accidents and from preventing them from happening. His contribution to SES Onboard is the Toolbox of Knowledge. “I like to contribute to the over all riskawareness onboard”, says Ingemar. “The aim is to create a fundamental understanding of the different parts of loss prevention and how they can coincide into accidents. Such an understanding is effective to prevent accidents from happening, which is far more cost effective than to handle them.”
Normal human reactions According to Ingemar Pålsson human error should be regarded as normal human reactions based on the given presumptions. Therefore the focus of this part of the Toolbox is on the human factor.
The purpose is to point out different causes and how they can be related to eachother in order to help prevent accidents. Any safety related work must also include everyone in the organisation and it is therefore firmly believed that the best result in loss prevention is achieved when both the ashore as well as the onboard personnel are involved. The Toolbox so far contains information about how to prevent, detect and control any accidental event during normal operation. The work with loss prevention is basedon three areas: • risk identification • evaluation of safety measures • risk evaluation/mitigation. The main parts of loss prevention are: • management/crew • bridge and engine control • ship • environment. The levels of actions are: • to prevent • detect • control/mitigate. The risk identification is divided into two parts, activity description and identification of accidental events. During the phase of risk identification the possible hazards and accidental events are identified. It is important that the identification takes the overall maritime risk environment into consideration. This comprisesthe personnel onboard and ashore, the ship with its technical systems and the environment. The central part of the identification of accidental events is the identification of operation failures, which may lead to loss of control. In the activity description a description of the four main parts is done: • Management/crew deals with information about cargo and trade, management, number and competence of crewmembers etcetera. • The information about the control systems of the bridge and engine room describes not only the technical possibilities to supervise the operational status and situations but also the logical layout and the accessibility for the crew. • The part about the ship describes the type of ship, its dimension, speed, propulsion, equipment etc. • Environment contains information about conditions that can be expected on the trade in question with regards to weather, wave height, currents, other traffic etc.
The basic input of the identification of accidental events is the knowledge of the ship, the trade and the crew. The task here is to identify and describe accidents and the potential for large accidents. The evaluation of safety measures includes the four main parts where management/crew, control systems, the ship and the environment are taken into consideration. The work consists of identifying those failures and events, which might develop into accidental events and show how they can be prevented, detected and controlled. If the series of events should be allowed to develop into an accident, the task also consists of how to detect, control and mitigate the accident. The result of this estimation should also contain the consequences and frequencies of any event possible.
Quite abstract The process of doing this is considered as quite abstract. Therefore a Loss Prevention Diagram can be of help. The diagram gives a graphic description of the different areas and levels and how they interact in the process of hindering an event to develop into a catastrophe. The result of the evaluation of safety measures will then serve as an input value into the risk evaluation, where the total risk level will be analysed.
Cecilia Österman
and in sakerhetsvardering.pdf (Sjöfartsverket)
The pdf-version of this article from The Scandinavian Shipping Gazette