The headlines scream on a daily basis: “Manning Crisis the Biggest Challenge Facing Shipping”, “Crew Compromises Mean Safety Crisis” and “Crew Shortages to Get Ugly.” How did we as an industry get ourselves into this situation and what can be done about it?

One way it happened – at least in the tanker segment – is that the tankers that are being built today are more versatile than they were even ten years ago. So, what used to be straightforward chemical tankers are now often flexible enough to carry products of all kinds. But are the people who sail them equally flexible – do they possess the requisite certificates to handle both chemicals and oil products? If you analyse the vetting statistics that are coming in, it seems not. Non-conformances due to the lack of crew with the right certificates are on the rise. Accidents due to inexperienced crews are on the rise. Insurance rates are on the rise.
What happened? Building ships fit for purpose takes time, as does training people so they are fit for purpose. Why didn’t those building the ships communicate the coming needs for more flexible manpower to match the more flexible ships to those manning the ships? And if they did, why didn’t the manning side react? There may not be easy answers to these questions. The real question, looking forward, is what can be done now?
DNV works to ensure that ships are fit for purpose and now DNV SeaSkill™ is working in a number of ways to help owners and crewing managers ensure that the people who sail them are equally fit for purpose.

Here’s one way we’re doing it:
In early June, DNV SeaSkill™ will gather a group of quality tanker owners and oil majors in Svendborg, Denmark to work together to develop an open standard for liquid cargo handling training.
This workshop and the resulting standards – it is expected that there will be two, one for pump room tankers and one for deep well pump tankers – are an example of a proactive industry-driven initiative to set standards for liquid cargo handling training before the authorities and legislators move to do so. In an era when it is increasingly difficult to live up to cargo owner demands for time-in-rank and time-with-company, industry players themselves can see the business value in raising the bar to ensure safe and secure operations.
Owners such as Shell, BP, Teekay, Maersk, Norden, Torm and others participating in the workshop will provide the subject matter expertise and DNV SeaSkill™ will provide its expertise in preparing standards, as well as lending the credibility and integrity of the DNV name. The result will be a standard for liquid cargo handling simulator courses, based on the real world knowledge of these industry experts gained from actual operations combined with the knowledge DNV SeaSkills™ possesses about the certification of training and simulators.
The standards are expected to complement INTERTANKO’s recently introduced TOTS programme. Søren Segel of Maersk Training Centre, one of the driving forces behind the workshop, said, “The idea is not to compete with TOTS, but to complement it.”

The group hopes that the oil majors will embrace the standard and require their cargo carriers to adopt it for training their crews who are responsible for cargo. Ultimately, these owners believe that helping their vetting department helps business. TMSA has shown that vetting is no longer just about ships, it includes the shore organisation as well, so focusing on developing a standard for shore-based course content is an extension of this kind of thinking.
Over the coming months, DNV SeaSkill™ will be revealing more about the holistic approach it is working on to assist the industry in solving the manning crisis. When upwards of 80% of accidents are caused by human error, the human factor cannot be ignored.