An independent study illustrates that 50 per cent of all nautical accidents could have been avoided if the vessels were equipped with the bridge design, nautical safety class notation (NAUT).
Statistics from 1990 to 2001 point out a 50 per cent reduction in the number of nautical accidents for vessels built to the nautical safety class notation developed by DNV, compared to vessels built to the basic SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea Convention) requirements.
The external study is built on factual ship collisions, contact damages and groundings. The inquiry covers vessels above 6000 GRT, built after 1990. The study’s result shows that the mean accident rate to ships without nautical class notation is 40, while the mean accident rate to vessels with nautical class notation is 20, meaning half as large.
Furthermore - approximately 50 per cent of all ship accidents are either caused by collisions or groundings, or otherwise related to contact damages. This fact may tell us that there is a potential for a 25 per cent reduction of all accidents at sea if the total bridge system is addressed properly.
The offshore service vessel bridge is even more complex than any vessel’s bridge because it is both a mean for navigation and a mean for supporting offshore installations. Accordingly there is reason to believe that the gain is even higher for these vessels compared to any other types of vessels.
New guidelines reduce bridge system failures
New guidelines for offshore service vessels named – Bridge design offshore service vessels (NAUT-OSV) - is a set of guidelines for the design of the complete bridge, developed in a joint industry project. The purpose has been to counter the large number of collisions between offshore service vessels and offshore installations by optimising the bridge layout and design and the equipment to be handled by the operators in different operational situations during navigation and offshore operations.
Examples from other parts of the shipping industry illustrate the importance of the bridge design. Both the grounding of the cruiseships Royal Majesty off the coast of Boston in 1995, summing up to more than seven million US dollars, and the Monarch of the Seas accident in 1998 in the Caribbean could have been avoided if the vessels had been built and tested according to the nautical safety notations.
Caused by lack of attention to the total bridge system
“The importance of addressing the total bridge system as a risk-reducing measure is underestimated in shipping as a whole,” says Nautical Surveyor in DNV, Hans Ramsvik.
This is mainly due to the fact that such accidents commonly are explained as “human error” accidents rather than situation caused accidents.
The main objective of the traditional NAUT notations is to reduce the risk of failure in bridge operations. They exceed the basic requirements for bridge design and instrumentation, and require, among other things:
• designated workstations for all tasks to be performed at the bridge
• extensive requirements to field of vision
• electronic chart systems
• an automatic grounding avoidance system.
During the past few years, from 1998 to 2004, the number of NAUT class requests per year has risen from some 10 per cent to more than 30 per cent of the total number of DNV class requests.
Statoil ASA and Solstad Shipping AS in Skudeneshavn have recently entered a contract to build one of the world’s biggest and most effective offshore service vessels at Flekkefjord Slip & Maskinfabrikk. The vessel is being built according to DNV’s NAUT-OSV guidelines.
