Fatigue management: Are our current process sufficient?

During the last SAFETY4SEA Singapore Forum, Captain Hari Subramaniam, Regional Head – Business Relations of The Shipowners’ Club, shared his thoughts on seafarers’ fatigue. As per the Club statistics, the human element appeared to be the primary cause of most marine incidents, with fatigue playing a major role. Hence questions are being raised as to whether the marine industry was seeing fatigue in the correct perspective or are we taking it lightly? Most importantly, are we even measuring it correctly?

Is there really a problem with fatigue?

To start with, if it isn’t broken don’t try to fix it. To get a grip on the tiller, key shipboard activities across various segments of the marine industry were analysed by the Club and the following findings were noted:

• Passenger vessel incidents – The Club’s analysis of its recent passenger vessel claims highlighted that that the human factor played a major role being responsible for 94% of such claims which also included related contributing factors such as inadequate maintenance, inadequate procedures and shore management shortcomings.
• Navigational Claims – The Club’s analysis of its recent navigational claims showed that 93% of such claims notified to the club were attributed to the human element. While equipment failure was responsible for only 7% of incidents, the human element comprised of improper ship handling (29%), improper watch keeping (32%), improper passage planning (6%), pilot error (10%) and improper weather monitoring (16%).
• Oil Tanker (cargo) Claims – The Club’s analysis of its recently notified oil tanker (cargo) claims showed that whilst equipment failure accounted for 15% of such claims, the Human element played a key role in the remaining 85% of the claims and was these were further exacerbated by inadequate tank cleaning (24%), failure to follow procedures (36%), poor maintenance (16%), and cargo calculation error (9%).
• Mooring Incident Claims – Out of the total mooring claims recently notified to the club, 70% of such claims were attributed to the Human element. Further contributing factors of these human element related claims were analysed as inadequate supervision (44%) and communication failure (26%). The remaining 30% were analysed as mooring equipment failure (although some of this could also have a human element angle due to poor inspection regimes and improper replacement of equipment).
• Enclosed Space entry Claims – In the recently analysed policy year, there was a total of 15 claims involving enclosed space accidents with 6 fatalities notified to the Club. These incidents, especially the fatalities were deemed unacceptable. 100% of these claims were attributed to the human element, the reason being that enclosed space entry procedures are rather comprehensive and straightforward and if followed properly, we can safely say that there will be minimal chances the occurrence of such claims.

Are we on the right track?

In 1998, the ISM Code entered into force. At that time, human error was assessed in excess of 80%. But 21 years down the line our statistics show that things aren’t exactly improving. Clearly as an industry there is something wrong with regards to the implementation of the ISM code if this trend is not improving.

It is imperative that our approach towards risk analysis and risk management should be to find out WHY (incidents keep recurring) and not WHO (is at fault). Currently, there is an abundance of regulation, training tools and elaborate procedures to ensure that Seafarers who go on board are well trained and aware of the job, however are we still readily continuing to accept that shipboard accidents are due to lack of knowledge and awareness? We must therefore continue to challenge ourselves with the question – is human error to blame or are we completely missing the point and drawing the wrong conclusion? Is it really the Seafarer at fault or are the operating models set out/implemented by the shore based aspect of the Human element getting it wrong? (YES – ironically shore based managements comprise of humans who also equally contribute to the human element!!)

Fatigue : How do we currently measure fatigue?

Now, let’s discuss fatigue and how that slots into this whole discussion.

A good way to kick-start the introspection would be to ask ourselves that assuming that the chances of the seafarer’s ignorance or a lack of knowledge were remote, could a lack of concentration/focus be a more pragmatic angle to investigate? If so, then fatigue would naturally be one of the major contributing factors to consider.

The availability of internet on board could be another issue that exacerbates matters. For example, when a seafarer goes back to his cabin after a long day’s work to get some well deserved rest, he would probably take off his seafaring hat and with the assistance of freely available internet connectivity on board, he would most likely don the family hat interacting with his social circles via live streaming or social media. They would thereby be privy to all the problems back home, and instead of getting valuable rest, they would be eating into their hours of rest, busy trying to solve the problems back home. This isn’t exactly making the current system of clocking hours of work and rest look very relevant or credible anymore.  Ironically, with so much discussion on fatigue and its immense contribution towards accidents, when vessels are inspected by Port State Control (PSC) or vessel superintendents, the hours of work and rest is perhaps the most immaculate and perfectly maintained document on board. So, once again, let’s ask ourselves – is this the right way of measuring fatigue?

What is the Club doing to improve fatigue measurement?

The Shipowners’ Club has partnered with Sleep and Fatigue Research (SAFR), a company which uses wearable technology, fatigue prediction algorithms and an app/software to predict human fatigue in advance. Together we are making a conscientious effort to study levels of alertness and fatigue in relation to sleep patterns, hours of work including timings of shifts of seafarers. The system in trial with some of our Members whose seafarers are using wearable technology and the sanitized data obtained from these are being fed to a software with specific sleep pattern algorithms to effectively help assess whether the seafarer is properly rested or not. This might be a useful tool for shipboard management teams to know firsthand whether a watchkeeper coming on watch is actually fresh and fit to assume duties. It may also go some way to assist vessel operators to assess if the manning levels are sufficient to cope with the demands of their current trading pattern, remembering that the ISM code puts the onus back on the operator to ensure the vessels are adequately manned notwithstanding the Minimum Safe manning Document.

The Club has also teamed up with the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London and conducted a bridge alarm survey whereby questionnaires were circulated on board to research contributing factors to navigational incidents and to investigate whether alarms on the bridge affected the attention/focus of bridge watchkeepers . “Alarm fatigue” was something which came to the forefront of the survey findings and was so pertinent because all alarms on the bridge sounded similar and navigational watchkeepers struggled to differentiate between the alarms.  More importantly, the alarms of more significance were no louder than the routine alarms. The feedback received was that a majority of watchkeepers thought that collectively these were false alarms and therefore ignored them.

These findings are also under consideration at IMO level to see whether this would trigger changes in the bridge layout designs and alarm notification systems to create a more effective and less stressful working environment for the navigational watchkeepers.

Right now, we are at the tip of the iceberg and we need to rethink our ways of how we measure fatigue, rather than simply relying on perfect documentation which creates a false impression that nothing is out of place.

Above text is an edited version of Capt. Hari Subramaniam’s presentation during the 2019 SAFETY4SEA Singapore Forum.

You may view his presentation herebelow

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.