Training for seafarers needs to change philosophy

RINA Academy Philippines is the winner of the SAFETY4SEA Training Award this year. Capt Nicolo Terrei discusses about the current and future challenges concerning seafarers’ training and emphasizes on the need for making seafarers fully familiarized with the new technology introduced onboard. Capt. Terrei further says that training needs to change direction and focus on enhancing the skill of the officer with a deeper familiarization and training ashore as well as onboard.  

SAFETY4SEA:  RINA Academy Philippines received the SAFETY4SEA Training Award for offering quality training introducing a new system called Competence Management System to continuously assess and train seafarers.  What does this milestone mean to your organization?

Nicolo Terrei:Winning an award from the prestigious organization like Safety4sea is an honor and a great privilege for us.  It means so much because it is an acknowledgment of our efforts in implementing ideas of development and improvement over the years.  It is the by-product of a vision that was materialized by our continuous offer of quality assessment and training to the seafarers.  A great honor like this gives us determination to work harder in developing new techniques and strategies that will further enhance and uplift the quality of our assessment and training services.

S4S: What are the key challenges surrounding the training of seafarers today?

N.T.: The challenges surrounding the training of seafarers today is finding a way to continuously update the equipment of the training centers and the instructors as close as possible to the requirement of the ruling body and shipping industry. We have to consider a lot of factors affecting our focus in enhancing the competency and familiarization of the seafarers specifically on the use and the management of new equipment (like electronic navigation, balance water management, control of emission and preparation for the polar code), while at the same time taking in consideration the workload that the seafarers have onboard nowadays, and the period of rest in combination with the time that’s needed to be dedicated on the training.

S4S: In what way do you believe training needs to be developed in order to keep up with industry’s dynamic environment?

N.T.: Nowadays, majority of training centers are organized in order to provide the seafarers with training required by the STCW. During the past years in Rina Academy, we developed a department that is focused in following a new system of training called Competency Management System (CMS).  It practically covers all the aspects of the preparation and assessment of the competency of the seafarers for the new requirements of the shipping industry.  One of the strong points of the new system is that it can be continuously updated, and can also be tailored for the type of vessel, type of trade and type of cargo.  The system is arranged in such way that it is continuously in contact with the owner, the ruling body of the shipping, and is also monitoring data coming from port state control, vetting, and any other inspections done onboard the vessel.   This is in order to update and/or adjust the training with holistic consideration of all the mentioned factors. At the same time, CMS also includes the assessment of our shore people.

S4S: How training in shipping could be developed to meet the needs of Generation Z?

N.T.: The new philosophy of the training must be changed as well on the conception and the organization of a training center.  The training should be developed congruent to the applicability in each generation.  Online learning is becoming more and more utilized to aid more efficient learning, both by theory and application.  For us, the future is on the capability of the training center to gather information and training materials directly from the makers of the ship equipment and organizing with them a section of training in order to make the seafarers fully familiarized with the new technology introduced in the industry everyday. 

S4S: What is your key message to the industry stakeholders with respect to the future of maritime training?

N.T.: The changes in the shipping industry has always been marked by disasters.  As a consequence, the measures to prevent recurrence, new regulations has been enforced.  ISM, sire inspection, port state control, and other audits carried out by the recognized organizations involved in the shipping industry helped on the reduction of the number of accidents and other casualties.  During the recent years, despite all the rules and regulations, there was a moment of control but trends of casualty at sea started to increase again.  We think that these are mainly from incidents from the lack of knowledge and skill on the use of new equipment on board and on the other side, there is the short experience and gap on the competency of the seafarers because of the so called “easy promotion” owing from the huge industry demand of officers.  Therefore, the future of the marine training must be focused on the enhancement of the skills of the officers with a deeper familiarization and training ashore as well as onboard, and to have the whole system of training flexible enough and able to adopt with the continuous changes of a dynamic industry as shipping.

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.