During the 2019 SAFETY4SEA London Conference, Mr. Manit Chandler discussed the importance of data sharing between companies in the maritime industry. He noted that sharing data could prevent accidents from being repeated.
My personal journey around data collection and knowledge sharing started in 2005, when I was in a lifeboat accident. My wrist literally went back. Multiple fractures, my friend call me the ‘Iron Man’.
After I came back home, I did what all the sailors do; we discussed about our companies, our masters, our chief engineers. And what came out was that that incident, which my company at that time called it a ‘freak accident’, wasn’t actually as freak as we thought.
It had already happened in many other companies; the challenge was that it wasn’t shared.
15 years down the line I still like to test whether any of the companies still know any of these freak accidents can happen. 15 years counting none of the companies have shared such information.
So, why don’t companies share data? The answer is simple.
- The fear of repercussion. I call it the parent-child effect. As parents we want our kids to come and tell us what wrong they have done. How many of us have the courage to tell them that it’s all right.
- Time and Resource Constraints. You keep asking data but how do companies share it? Companies don’t have that much of resource to collect that kind of information and share it.
- No personal gain. If a company shares that information with you, what are they going to get back in return?
What should we do differently? We need to change the culture.
One way of doing it is asking three basic questions.
- How do we safeguard their interests?
- How do they benefit from the output?
- How do we make it easy to share data?
How other industries approach data collection?
If you take the aviation industry, there was an incident in the US, the transport airline accident. Where they realized about 4 weeks before, another aircraft had been through a similar situation. But, the information wasn’t shared, and the aircraft crashed. That led to that organization called Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). Similar organizations have come up around the world, with one being in the UK, CHIRP for the shipping industry. Railways Safety Standard Board (RSSB) came in to existence after the rail incident in Paddington. Again, a situation where the train driver jumped the signal, because he thought It was green rather than red, and investigation showed that six times at the same spot, the signal had been jumped.
Information was there but not shared. It’s been four years and counting and I’m yet to find this knowledge sharing platform. Question is why?
Shipping companies hold the best data to permanently improve our industry. It’s not in the public domain. It’s all within the shipping companies themselves.
What data are we talking?
Companies report data when something goes wrong. You need to go to a P&I club, to an insurance company. You’ve got PSC. All these are either in the public domain, or companies have to report it.
The goal is that before an undesired event or a high impact event happens, to publish the internal data.
Once again, if we don’t tap into that data we will never be able to bring that step change in the maritime industry.
What is the recipe of success?
It’s the three Pillars of Data Sharing.
- Trust within the companies to share the data.
- Quality output. It has to be something meaningful.
- Different types of ships. As an industry we are so focuses, for example on tankers. We’re forgetting bulk carriers killed a lot of people.
In this context, HiLo is a predictive model with data from 42 Companies and 3,000 vessels.
Key results (within HiLO subscribers)
- 72% reduction in risk of lifeboat accidents
- 65% reduction in risk of engine room fires
- 25% reduction in risk of bunker spills
Above text is an edited version of Mr. Manit Chandler’s presentation during the 2019 SAFETY4SEA London Conference.
View his presentation here:
The views presented hereabove are only those of the author and not necessarily those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
Manit Chander, CEO, HiLo Maritime Risk Management
After almost 2 decades aboard Tankers, including as a Master Mariner, Manit worked as an independent consultant managing cost efficiency, sales optimisation and growth strategy. Manit moved into Shell Shipping & Maritime as Strategy Manager where he began to develop HiLo. As HiLo CEO, and a sailor himself, Manit is passionate about championing the needs and safety of seafarers. Manit holds an MBA from London Business School in Strategy and Finance.
