When Stuart Edmonston took over from Karl Lumbers as loss prevention director at the UK P&I Club in 2015, he had big shoes to fill.

Lumbers was regarded as the guru in the field, and the UK P&I had long been ­associated with a strong loss prevention team.

Edmonston, 44, had all the right credentials. A former master mariner, he came ashore in 2006 after 14 years at sea and was taken on by London law firm HFW as a casualty investigator.

Since joining the UK P&I, he has realised just how much emphasis it puts on loss prevention activities.

“Safety is everything here,” he said. “I report to the board three times a year and they want to know exactly what my team and I have been doing around the world and how we are assisting members.

“It’s a club at the end of the day, and when you join, you get me and my team of mariners and engineers to help you.”

The role of the loss-prevention team is to reduce accidents — and claims. Claims records and big data can uncover safety trends and areas of concern, but stopping the incidents is another matter. That comes down to getting the club’s safety message across to crew and training seafarers.

Edmonston’s approach is to keep the message simple. Under the club’s Lessons Learned programme, law firm and flag state accident reports are condensed into three-minute animated ­videos, or short papers, for ship’s crew to study. Seafarers are then asked to consider how they would stop accidents occurring.

“We like crew to spend three minutes watching our videos, then 30 minutes thinking about it,” Edmonston said.

Crew injuries can be highly costly for P&I clubs but many incidents are considered to be avoid­able with the right safety culture.

The aviation industry has it all worked out on human factors, such as how we should communicate, how we should lead, attitudes and culture

Stuart Edmonston

Crew health, including mental health, is also a factor in seafarer claims.

How the costs mount up

It is not only the cost of medical care that is the responsibility of the P&I club when there is injury and illness onboard, but associated costs such as ship delays, additional bunkers used in diverting vessels and the use of medical helicopters.

One approach that Edmonston believes helps is to meet crew face to face and discuss their safety concerns and remedies.

Increased regulation, such as the International Safety Management Code, has encouraged shipowners to gather their crew for safety seminars. When a UK P&I mutual member holds such an event, Edmonston and his team are always willing to attend.

“Speaking to crew directly was a passion of mine when I came in. Members now are having crew seminars, or the ones with more money are getting all their crew together on a rotational basis.

“We say, ‘We’ll come for free’, we’ll speak to the crew and go through case studies and do a workshop. The seminars are very popular,” he said.

‘Hugely enthusiastic’

An improving safety culture is also allowing crews to be more open about onboard issues than when Edmonston was at sea, so such gatherings ­often lead to frank discussions.

Teaming up with other clubs under the International Group of P&I Clubs to tackle safety issues is also proving effective. ­Edmonston heads the Inter­national Group’s loss prevention publications unit.

“I’m hugely enthusiastic about clubs working together on things that affect all of us. We are working more closely together now and we’ve had some success looking at key safety issues that are affecting the industry, like closed space ­entry and liquefaction.”

Another unique approach has been to link up with the airline training body CAE on human-­element safety training. The idea is to bring the skills ­employed in the airline industry to shipping.

“The aviation industry has it all worked out on human factors, such as how we should communicate, how we should lead, attitudes and cultures. In short, that is what we are doing by providing this training to our members at training facilities around the world,” Edmonston said.

“It’s interesting to see how the aviation industry deals with ­fatigue. It is a completely different mindset. They have total transparency. They say to pilots, ‘Tell us if you don’t feel rested enough, you won’t be criticised for it’.”