While the voting procedure for the 2019 SAFETY4SEA Awards is open, Simon MacLeod (Deputy Director – Loss Prevention) for North P&I Club tells a few words about SCORA, a safety culture tool for which the Club has been nominated for the Initiative Award. This tool aims to enhance performance in five key safety areas: Safety Leadership, Health and Wellbeing, Risk Management, Learning and Development and Safety Reporting, Mr, MacLeod explains and concludes that we need to stop blaming seafarers for every failure because safety at sea is a complex issue.
SAFETY4SEA: Your organization has been shortlisted for the 2019 SAFETY4SEA Awards in the ‘Initiative’ category alongside a number of other distinguished nominees. What would you like to share with industry’s stakeholders with respect to this development?
Simon MacLeod: We are very proud to have been nominated for SCORA, which is our unique tool that provides owners and managers with an insight into how the safety awareness and safety culture within their organisation is perceived by both ship and shore-based staff.
S4S: How has your initiative influenced industry’s landscape? What are the key areas of attention?
S.McL.: Real safety performance – particularly related to safety culture – is notoriously difficult to measure with any confidence. SCORA provides operators with feedback on how they are performing across five key safety areas and provides generic guidance on steps that can be taken to drive improvements in performance in these areas. The safety areas are Safety Leadership, Health and Wellbeing, Risk Management, Learning and Development and Safety Reporting.
S4S: Do you have any new projects on the pipeline and/or plans that you would like to share with the rest of the industry?
S.McL.: We do have a number of projects and initiatives in the pipeline as we are continuously reviewing the needs of our membership and helping them to prepare for factors affecting the maritime industry, whether its operational, environmental or regulatory.
S4S: If you could change one thing about the shipping industry, what would it be and why?
S.McL.: To stop seafarers being blamed for everything. When an incident occurs, there are too many people who immediately point the finger at crew competence. The reality is far more complex. Complex issues are not solved with simple answers.
S4S: What is your key message to the industry for enhancing safety culture onboard and ashore?
S.McL.: Human error is not a root cause. In order to put measures in place which properly address and resolve problems you have to dig deeper in order to fully understand why the personnel involved did what they did.
You may cast your vote for North Club at 2019 SAFETY4SEA Awards dedicated webpage till 6th of September 2019!
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.
