DNV has introduced the shipping industry’s first competence standard for vessel remote control centre operators (RCCO).
The standard is supported by a new recommended practice that offers a certification scheme for RCCOs. These provide a framework for training, assessing, and certifying personnel working in remote-control centres that support or manage operations at sea.
Ensuring that these vessels operate at an equivalent level of safety is essential to building confidence and realizing the potential of these technologies. However, despite the technical solutions being in place, competence requirements for those monitoring, supporting and/or controlling these ships have not been defined
say DNV.
The new DNV competence standard for remote control centre operators and the supporting recommended practice were developed in collaboration with Kongsberg Maritime, Wilhelmsen, as well as the University of South-Eastern Norway, and the Norwegian Maritime Authority.
According to Torsten Schröder, SeaSkill Service Manager, Competence & Learning at DNV Maritime, making sure that shore-based staff are prepared for autonomous, remote-controlled or remotely supported operations at sea is a big challenge. For this reason, the people managing these operations are paramount.
This is why we are so pleased to have developed the RP with expert partners from across the industry. Having a wide range of expertise was essential to devising a uniform and controlled approach to the training, assessment and certification of RCCOs
The recommended practice gives guidance to centres conducting examinations of remote-control centre operators and issuing personnel certificates as a certification body. It also covers the competence building process for candidates before undertaking an RCCO examination, for example learning programmes and practice sessions in the centres themselves.
The DNV SeaSkill standard ST-0324 lists the neccesary competencies for the operation of autonomous or remotely controlled and/or supported ships.
It also covers competency in:
- Emergency handling and resource management within a remote control centre (RCC)
- Communication with 3rd parties on behalf of the ship under remote-control
- Man-machine interaction
