Irish tanker owner Ardmore is leveraging social media trends by shooting video shorts to teach crew members about safety incidents rather than having to pore over pages of investigation reports.
It is one of a series of digital tools the shipowner has been using to ensure crew members, whether messmen or captains, keep safety at the front of their minds.
“We have begun leveraging technology, intentionally trying to do things differently,” said Ardmore fleet director Gerry Docherty.
He said the problem with accident investigation reports is that they are written in a particular way mandated by investigation authorities.
“Do we honestly think from a cultural, or a language point of view the crew will read this,” said Docherty, pointing to how English may be the spoken language on board, but some of the crew may not be as comfortable reading a report.
“Let’s be honest. They can communicate effectively, but are they going to read a cumbersome report on a safety incident? Probably not!” he said. “So, how do we know the message is getting across.”
Now, the company compiles the data relating to a noteworthy incident or near miss and sends it to Mumbai-based content outfit MarinePALS, which produces a three to four-minute micro-learning video.
“I think the science is proven that people learn faster when they see something as opposed to reading it directly,” added Doherty.
“When we go out to do ship visits, the crew tell us they like it because they can see what happened, it makes sense to them, rather than asking them to sit and flick through a 24-page report.”
The company behind the videos, MarinePALS, was launched by Captain Pradeep Chawla who spent 39 years running training at Anglo-Eastern.
It is also the company behind another initiative Ardmore rolled out in 2020, an internal safety rating app. It is installed on a tablet, which every crew member can anonymously use to report incidents.
Whistleblowers?
Doherty said the app aimed to remove the hierarchal approach to safety reporting and checklists. He is reluctant to describe it as a whistleblower portal, but as a way to encourage continual safety awareness.
“It’s all very well us sending out safety briefings to masters, chief engineers, second engineers, chief mates,” he said.
“How do we know that the cook, the messman, the AB, the bosun and the oilers, how do we know where they are in terms of safety awareness and safety knowledge?”
Docherty said the company has built up a series of performance indicators — he does not want to call them checklists — and wanted to know how engaged the crew are in terms of awareness of their requirements.
Ardmore’s crew frequently work aboard their vessels through employment facilitated by a joint venture management firm called Anglo-Ardmore. This collaboration was initiated by the Irish tanker owner in partnership with Anglo-Eastern a decade ago.
The crew and officers will rotate around the fleet, possibly between two and three sister ships, gaining familiarisation with the vessels and each other.
There is a mixed crew, largely Indian from the days employing some vessels solely with Anglo-Eastern, but also other nationalities from when the vessels were deployed through Thome Ship Management.
Docherty notes that Ardmore acknowledges the risk of the safety awareness reporting app being misused as a retaliatory tool. This could involve a disgruntled crew member making false comments about a peer or the safety behaviour of the top management on board.
But he also noted that the app had had another cultural benefit, as it could help weed out poor attitudes, identify cultural issues and help crew members who needed additional training.
