Nordic maritime safety is facing major challenges – both technological ones relating to the activity in Arctic areas – and environmental ones in the Baltic Sea and Northern Europe.
The Nordic Maritime Safety Committee also took the opportunity to discuss its own way of working and future when it met in Oslo on 27 April. Sweden’s Göran Hammarberg was thanked for his efforts as chairman of the committee for many years. He is succeeded by Knut Arnesen of Wilh. Wilhelmsen.
Arctic, fuel and environment
DNV Maritime’s COO, Tor E. Svensen, gave an account of the issues in which DNV is most interested right now. At the top of the list are the challenges in Arctic areas where new sailing routes will not least require the development of class rules linked to ice and ice floes up to 180 cm thick.
The environment is also becoming more and more important: “We must think about the environment right from the design stage until the ship is to be scrapped,” said Tor E. Svensen. With increased oil prices, fuel economy is once again an important issue after 25 years.
“A lot of the expertise in this has disappeared, but much of the methodology is still available,” he said.
“With regard to both the environment and oil price, there are definitely reasons to develop new solutions that result in lower consumption and thus also less emissions. A reduction in the fuel consumption of 5–15% is achieveable with mainly operational measures.”
Larger LNG-ships – double-hull bulk carriers
Tor E. Svensen also pointed to developments in LNG ships, which are becoming larger and more cost-effective, leading to a reduction in transport costs.
He also thinks we will see more double-hull designs for bulk carriers, which are also under pressure to shorten the time spent at terminals. Even larger container ships saving cost by increasing scale, although maintaining a speed at 25 knots are another realistic development.
Quality first
DNV Maritime’s order book is larger than ever. This puts stringent demands on DNV Maritime’s organisation, which sees its biggest challenge in delivering the quality DNV require in our goals. “For us, quality is priority number one,” states Tor E. Svensen of a DNV Maritime which has brought a lot of new expertise into DNV through intensified recruitment.
Denmark – the saviour of the Nordic region?
Hans Henrik Petersen of Denmark’s Shipowners’ Association reported on the flourishing Danish shipping environment. The frame conditions there are such that there are grounds for asking if the Danish model is the saviour of Nordic shipping? Under the collective concept of a ‘Blue Denmark’, Danish maritime operations have really got the wind in their sails. The Danish newbuilding programme now comprises 230 ships equal to a total of 12 million gross tonnes and worth DKK 70 billion.
“We’ve received broad backing from our politicians, not least thanks to the fact that Danish shipping achieves high revenues using few people,” says Hans Henrik Petersen.
Close contact with universities
In 1999 the Nordic Committee chairman Göran Hammarberg expressed worries about the growing distance between the industry and universities and encouraged DNV to do something about it. Since year 2000 DNV has organised annual workshops between all Nordic maritime universities and DNV in which important research and educational issues related maritime safety have been discussed.
Professor Pål Bergan of DNV Research reported on these conferences and, in particular, on the conference held at Danish Technical University in Lyngby last January. This workshop focused on ‘New structural and material concepts for ships’ and ‘Collision and Grounding’. “In seven years, we’ve held seven successful workshops,” said Pål Bergan. Currently four DNV employees hold ‘industrial professorships’ at the universities.
Testing software
‘From sledgehammer to the Space Shuttle – the computer systems on board and the challenges that these represent to the industry,’ was the title of the talk given by Thor Inge Fossen, of Marine Cybernetics, and DNV’s Jon Rysst. Marine Cybernetics is launching its Hardware in the Loop (HIL) methodology for testing of computer based marine systems, which aims to reduce the number of bugs in software. DNV has prepared a standard for certification based on HIL testing.
“The market has not been satisfied with the way in which critical on-board computer systems have been tested,” says Jon Rysst. “DNV believes in this new way of testing. This has previously been carried out on cars and aircraft and now the shipping and oil/offshore industries are starting to do the same. We have experienced many weaknesses in software systems, and welcome the new test method.”
Human factors – learning from the airline industry
DNV’s Jens Rolfsen rounded off the plenary meeting by asking whether the maritime industry has anything to learn from the airline industry about human factors and accidents.
“We’re facing a paradigm shift with regard to human error,” said Jens Rolfsen, whose background is in safety work in the airline industry. “Where we earlier aimed for error-free operations, we today accept that errors will occur and have to be managed. It’s essential for us to find out why the errors arise and we must build good barriers to prevent errors from leading into accidents.”
“When we look at the crew as a part of strengthening these barriers, it is important that general knowledge can be transformed into specific behaviour,” said Jens Rolfsen. Questionnaires are used in this work to measure the safety culture both in the company and on board. With this as a basis, onboard learning programmes are developed to change crew behaviour.
“Changing behaviour through attitudinal change is a slow process, but knowledge can lead to a change in behaviour directly, and then the attitudes also fall into place,” stated Jens Rolfsen.