International Journal

on Marine Navigation

and Safety of Sea Transportation

Volume 6

Number 3

September 2012

391

1 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Human Resource Management is an innovative view

of the workplace management which is established

as useful method for analysing the strategic ap-

proach to the organizational management. This

method of management system has been defined

from different sources in a similar manner, for in-

stance, While Miler (1987) who stated that

".......those decisions and actions which concern the

management of employees at all levels in the busi-

ness and which are related to the implementation of

strategies directed towards creating and sustaining

competitive advantage". Miler emphasised on ac-

tions related to the management employee in order

to maintain competitive advantage. It should be not-

ed that after about a decade the definition of Human

Resource Management (HRM) is highlighted on its

responsibility for staffing people into the organiza-

tion. In this regard Cherrington (1995) expressed

that "Human resource management is responsible for

how people are treated in organizations. It is respon-

sible for bringing people into the organization, help-

ing them perform their work, compensating them for

their labours, and solving problems that arise".

The initiation of the advanced theory of manage-

ment caused that the term of describing the function

of workforce to be changed from “Personnel” to

“Industrial relations” to “employee relations” and fi-

nally to “Human Resource”. Although, all the above

mentioned terms are used nevertheless, the precise

and useful term is Human resource Management.

Some people believed that HRM is a part of HRD

(Human Resource Development) which includes the

great range of activities in order to develop person-

nel of organizations; in fact, the objective of HRM is

to increase the productivity of an organization by

improving the effectiveness of its employees. In the

last three decades, many changes have been applied

to the HRM function and HRD profession; in the

past, large organizations looked to the "Personnel

Crew Resource Management: The Role of

Human Factors and Bridge Resource

Management in Reducing Maritime Casualties

H. Yousefi

Khoramshahar Maritime University, Khoramshahar, Iran

R. Seyedjavadin

Business Management College, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran

ABSTRACT: This paper presents the Crew Resource Management which has now been in the existence for

more than two decades as a foundation of maritime transport in order to improve the operational efficiency of

shipping. The impact of human errors on collisions and grounding of ocean going vessels have been taken

place due to the human or team errors which need to be analyzed by various maritime casualties in depth. The

first section of this article is devoted to investigate the role of Human Resource Management, Crew Resource

Management and Maritime Crew Resource Management; it is because of minimizing ship accidents at sea.

The next part of this paper is designated to evaluate the Bridge Resource Management, Bridge Team Man-

agement and Human factors in depth. It should be noted that the necessary techniques in bridge team man-

agement should be clarified based on the consideration of the issues that why bridge team management is ar-

ranged. The next segment of this paper is dedicated to consider the ways of minimizing ship accidents by

offering optimum training methods for the future seafarers. The last part of this paper is designated to assess

the qualification of maritime lecturers based on STCW95 Convention and the MARCON project for teaching

the Bridge Resource Management.

392

Department," nevertheless recently, organizations

consider the "HR Department" as playing an im-

portant role in staffing, training and helping to man-

age people. The link between human resource man-

agement and the strategic goals of an organization

has been investigated by Miller (1989) as "The goal

of human resource management is to help an organi-

zation to meet strategic goals by attracting, and

maintaining employees and also to manage them ef-

fectively". After World War II, more attentions

needed to be applied to the labours due to the short-

age of skilled workers of companies, therefore the

general concentrate of HRM modified from concen-

tration on labour efficiency and skills to employee

satisfaction. Then, as consequences of the Act of

1960 and Act of 1970, companies began putting

more accents on HRM in order to avoid of violating

this legislations. In 1980, the HRM grows up rapidly

due to the several reasons such as the organizations

required skills of HRM professionals in order to

adapt the organization structure with a new genera-

tion of labour attitudes and behaviours, improving

educational levels, growth of offering services,

white colour job and more women as workforce, etc.

Marine Accident Investigation Branch (1999) stated

that four factors or four “Cs” such as commitment,

competence, cost-effectiveness, and congruence

should be used in order to evaluate whether the

HRM programme is succeeded or not? The author of

this paper expand the above assessment to the fol-

lowing five factors by adding Customer as five item

in order to determine whether the HRM programme

is succeeded or not. It is because; the services of

Human resource in an organization are provided for

the customer satisfaction, therefore we should pay

careful attention to attract our customers by improv-

ing the efficiency of the organization. In 1990, the

new technologies such as IT, satellite communica-

tions, computers and networking systems, fax ma-

chines, and other new devices have forced to change

the field of HRM. The second important change in-

fluencing HRM was related to the recent organiza-

tional structures, which emerged during the 1980s as

a result of the operational expansions of many com-

panies or diversification of their products and ser-

vices that continued through the 1990s. The third or

last factor of forcing to change the HRM field is

market globalization through world trade which was

enhancing competition abroad; in order to compen-

sate with the international competition, companies

should consider their HRM professionals for im-

proving the quality of products, productivity, and in-

novation of the organization.

2 CREW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Crew Resource Management has come to light for

more than two decades, nevertheless a misunder-

standing still exists within aviation and shipping in-

dustry for what the term entails. Crew Resource

Management (CRM) is a reliable management sys-

tem which makes the best use of all available means

such as equipment, people in order to improve safety

and increase operational activities within the ship-

ping industry. CRM includes a broad variety of

knowledge and skills encompassing cognitive skills

and interpersonal skills. ….very often extremely tra-

ditional education forms and context are very de-

motivating of our young generations, Stephen

J.Cross (2010). The cognitive skills are regarded as

the psychological procedures used for acquiring sit-

uational awareness, for solving problems, and for

taking decision and the interpersonal skills consist of

communications and teamwork. Crew Resource

Management is a management system which creates

the best possible use of all available means such as

equipment, communication, process and people in

order to improve safety of ship operations.

For the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of

crew members on board ships, a special training

course of the technical knowledge not only is essen-

tial for crew members; but also they require to im-

plement the requirement of CRM which are develop-

ing and understanding of the cognitive and

interpersonal skills.

Training of CRM skills are related to the theory

and practice of group behaviours which are properly

developed through a method called experiential

learning. It should be noted that CRM skills have

been taught individually as technical knowledge and

skills, nevertheless the considerable area of overlap

between the above two methods proposes that the

training would be more effective if it was included

from the basic of the Maritime Crew training meth-

od. Dominic Cardozo (1993) defined that Crew Re-

source Management is an active and interactive pro-

cess including all crew members, which helps to

detect, communicate and avoid or handle significant

threats to an operation, action or task by developing

and applying efficient countermeasures to minimize

the safety risk. Hackman (1986) describes the crew

as being frontline operators and safety to be a line

function by which the entire company culture and

company structure is defined. For the purpose of as-

sessing CRM in the maritime industries, it is neces-

sary to have a look at the growth of CRM in avia-

tion. In 1980, the first CRM training course was

implemented by the United Airlines which was

about the evaluation of crew members of their own

and their team members’ performance. Nowadays,

CRM is an essential training course not only for all

airlines and aviation schools, but also is mandatory

for maritime colleges in order to reduce human er-

rors and to avoid any incident, accident or /and colli-

sion. Since the main reasons of the majority of ship

accidents can be found in human errors, therefore,

393

CRM plays a vital role in reducing their negative re-

sult. CRM training course is necessary for operators

in every work field especially for ship’s crew based

on the latest revision of the STCW in June 2010. In

a sense, the overall integration of each responsibility

on board ship as a complicated teamwork is called

designing CRM training and application for the mar-

itime industry. It means that deck and engine offic-

ers, OS, AB, cooks and stewards with different na-

tionalities working closely together as a team. As a

result of the technological improvement in shipping,

the implementation of CRM strategies has been tak-

en more than three decades which is not offer a

completely agreeable result; therefore the old

schemes of designing CRM training need to be up-

dated. It should be noted that since the situation in

aviation is completely different with shipping busi-

ness, therefore it is not possible to copy or transfer

CRM from aviation to maritime field. It is because a

ship is a work place which cannot be left by the crew

for months; navigators are working on board ship for

24 hours on seven days a week in order to keep the

sea watch as duty officers who are not allow to sleep

more than six hours.

3 BRIDGE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

It is a training course in order to manage ship bridge

activities by Master, Pilot, Watchman, Wheelman

and officer on watch. Many collisions occurred as a

result of misunderstanding of the parties doing dif-

ferent activities on the bridge for instance pilots with

watch keepers. It is possible to imitate the expected

situations by using ship handling simulators in order

to improve the skill and communication between the

responsible persons on the bridge. For instance, in

1974, Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) called “Metulla”

grounded in the Magellan Straits with two pilots and

watch keepers who were present on the bridge; it

means that bridge teams were not working efficient-

ly in order to support each other. In fact, there are

two different comments on using simulator as train-

ing course, first Gyles and Salmon (1978) who stat-

ed that “Simulator-based training courses were in-

troduced primarily to train the skills of passage

planning and the importance of the Master/Pilot rela-

tionship”. This training initiative developed into the

Bridge Team Management (BTM) courses that are

conducted today on many simulators world-wide

and contain many of the elements to be found in

CRM courses in other industries. The role of simula-

tor as a tool for training CRM has been stated by

Barnet (2060) as follows “Bridge Resource Man-

agement (BRM) courses are a more recent initiative,

adapted directly from the aviation model, and are not

always based on the use of simulators”. Nowadays,

Maritime Universities offer a training course called

Bridge Team Management (BTM) or Bridge Re-

source Management (BRM) which is about the dis-

cussion of ship handling and navigational skills, un-

fortunately not emphasis on human factor. Micheal

Barnnet (2060) quoted from Flin et al regarding the

significance of the bridge resource management

course in the following paragraph as follows “With-

in other safety critical industries, and the military,

the training and assessment of resource management

skills is taking on a high level of importance as a

way of ensuring that errors are effectively detected

and managed (Flin & Martin, 2001; Flin et al.,

2000). It should be noted that CRM training course

is not important by many ship owner, it is because

no strong rule or regulation issued by IMO in order

to support it such as SOLAS, ISPS Code or even the

STCW. We hope that through the revision of STCW

according to the 2010 amendment it will adjust

CRM training as mandatory course for future seafar-

ers. In addition to the above explanation, the limita-

tion of bridge resources or bridge equipments should

be considered by seafarers. Bridge watch-keepers

should be aware of the dangers of being over-reliant

on these devices and:

· understand the types of errors that are possible and

recognise the operational warnings that appear on

the display;

· understand the limitations of the devices;

· regularly test the devices using the built-in opera-

tional test facilities.

4 MARITIME CREW RESOURCE

MANAGEMET

Maritime Resource Management and Bridge Team

Management Course are offered by maritime Uni-

versities in all over the world in order to concentrate

on optimum approach of seafarers to reduce man-

agement error. MCRM is an essential training course

for crew members of ships which approved by IMO.

This training program deals with management in

highly operational situations on board ship’s bridges,

in engine rooms etc. It defined by (Poop, 2009) as

“MCRM is a course that aims to provide knowledge

and a practical understanding of operative manage-

ment skills”. As we know majority of ship accidents

or incidents are being caused by human errors, there-

fore the main part of the MCRM course is to review

several case studies of accident and incident at sea.

The following table illustrates the number of Iranian

and foreign maritime accidents that rapidly raised in

2009 and reduced quickly in 2010, which was be-

cause of the standard training courses such as

MCRM, BRM, BTM, etc.

At this part, there are two more or less similar

ideas about the non-technical or resource manage-

ment which have been stated in order to improve the

required skill in crisis management.

394

Table 1 (Source: Iranian Port and Maritime Organization)

__________________________________________________

Maritime Accidents 2007 2008 2009

2010

__________________________________________________

Total number of accidents 93 88 116 22

Number of Iranian accidents 85 82 113 19

Number of Iranian sunken ships 36 37 52 7

number of person survived 720 656 834 226

Medical care offered to seafarers 108 119 158 47

__________________________________________________

Michael Barnett, et al (2002) stated that although

there is now a general acceptance of the core con-

cepts for the non-technical or resource management

skills required for competence in crisis management,

there is also an acceptance that the behaviours asso-

ciated with these skills are context specific. In addi-

tion, Helmreich et al. (1998) suggest that the optimal

implementation of resource management skills is

dependent upon the cultural context in which they

are applied. It should be noted that in order to evalu-

ate the application of resource management skills,

the assessment should be carried out within a cultur-

al context. The International Maritime Organiza-

tion’s Seafarer’s Training, Certification and Watch

keeping Code (International Maritime Organization,

1995) are the essential resource management skills.

Table A-V/2 of this code indicates the minimum

standard requires in crisis management and human

behaviour skills for senior officers who are in charge

of passengers in emergency situations. Majority of

Maritime Universities run the Resource Manage-

ment training courses which are combined as both

deck and engine field. The most part of the courses

are taken place by using simulator technique in order

to teach the lessons by sequence casualties.

5 HUMAN FACTORS

By considering the following reports, we would be

able to understand the role of human on maritime

accidents: Data from research undertaken by the UK

Protection and Indemnity Club (UK P&I, 1997) in-

dicates that human error directly accounted for 58%

of all shipping incidents that led to major insurance

claims. The United States Coastguard (1995) stated

that the human element was a root causal factor in

70% of all shipping incidents. Although not all of

these incidents led to a crisis situation, all had that

potential. Accepting that human error is inevitable,

there is a need to understand the behaviours of effec-

tive error detection and management in order to en-

sure safe and efficient operations (Helmreich et al.,

1998). The items related to the human factors are as

follows: firstly, fitness which is related to the ab-

sence of factors cause negative effect on human per-

formance such as regular sport and exercise or even

mental factor. Secondly, use of non-prescription

drugs, alcohol and extreme amounts of caffeine, etc.

Thirdly, seafarers communication difficulty which is

because of different languages, cultures, customs

and behaviours. Fourthly, fatigue of crew and the

qualification with optimum training of seafarers

based on the latest STCW requirements. The defini-

tion of human factor with the relevant items has

been stated by DNV (Det Norske Veritas) as fol-

lows: We believe that a central result of this analysis

is the paramount importance of the human factor. In

fact, in the majority of cases reviewed, the incident

was due to one or more of the following: Poor crew

competence, lack of communication, lack of proper

maintenance, lack of application of safety or other

procedures, inadequate training, poor judgment of

the situation, and so forth. This general conclusion

also means that many of the serious accidents re-

viewed might have been averted if some of the

above deficiencies did not exist. It should be noted

that the causes of accidents are grouped in different

codes as A,B,C,D,E,F,G, the codes defined by

(DNV) as “DAMA” database structure which is used

for both statistical and fault tree analysis. The fol-

lowing comments extracted from different opinion

of the five authors about the cases such as “what was

the cause of an accident” or “what possible measure

could have prevented it” in quantitative terms. The

five more important DAMA causes were:

− F04 (8.2%): Existing routines for safety control

known, but not followed.

− G02 (7.9%): Insufficient real competence (prac-

tice from occupation, waters, with equipment or

suchlike).

− A01 (6.6%): Very heavy weather, natural disas-

ter, etc.

− G07 (5.0%): Not adequate observation of own

position/not plotted on charts.

− G09 (4.0%): Misjudgement of own vessel’s

movements (current, wind etc.).

Within each group, the most important causes

were: Group A: Circumstances not related to the

ship: cause A01-Very heavy weather, natural disas-

ter etc (49.5% of the total), followed by cause A07-

Operational fault with other ship (wrong manoeu-

vre/poor seamanship etc) (16.2% of the total) and

A02-Current, wind etc led to strong drift or other

manoeuvre difficulties (7.1% of the total), covering

together a percentage of 72.8% of Group A cases.

Group B: Construction of the ship and location of

equipment on board: cause B01-The ship’s structural

strength not sufficient (49.1% of the total) and cause

B02-The structural strength weakened by later weld-

ing jobs, corrosion etc (30.9% of the total), together

coming to an 80% of Group B cases. Group C:

Technical conditions concerning equipment on

board: cause C09- Technical fault with equipment

(34% of the total) only.

395

Fig.1 (Source of data: R.Ziaretie, 2010)

Group D: Conditions concerning use and design

of equipment: there is no statistically significant

cause. Group E: Cargo, safeguarding and treatment

of cargo and bunkers: cause E01-Self-ignition in

cargo/bunker, also by “sloshing” in tanks (50% of

the total) only. Group F: Communication, organiza-

tion, procedures and routines: cause F04-Existing

routines for safety control known, but not followed

(31.4% of the total), followed by cause F10-Failure

of routines for inspection and maintenance on board

(11.3% of the total).

Group G: Individual on board, situation, judg-

ment, reactions: cause G02-Insufficient real compe-

tence (practice from occupation, waters, with

equipment or suchlike) (22% of the total), followed

by cause G07-Not adequate observation of own po-

sition/not plotted on charts (13.8% of the total), and

cause G09-Misjudgment of own vessel’s movements

(current, wind etc) (11.2% of the total). Figure.1

shows the cause of maritime accidents and human

errors as common factors at sea; it should be noted

that the maximum factor is related to the bad deci-

sion making of officer on watch and the next is poor

lookout of watchman, both by human errors.

By reviewing the above mentioned groups, there

was a serious statistical attention which has been

emphasized on groups F and G. In fact, it is not

amazing; because the two groups include mostly to

the maritime accidents which were due to the human

error. Figure.2 shows the causes of on board ships

with the main reason of bad decision and the next is

poor lookout.

6 MARITIME CASE STUDY

On 6

January 2002, the Dover Strait, one of the

busiest waterways in the world, was shrouded in

thick fog. Visibility was less than 200 meters in

places. Two ferries were crossing the Dover Strait

at 0900 that day. The “Diamant” was coming from

Oostende heading for Dover. The “Northern Mer-

chant” was heading to Dunkerque from Dover. Both

vessels were travelling at close to normal cruising

speed: “Diamant” a high-speed craft was travelling

at 29 knots, and the “Northern Merchant”, a Ro-Ro

ferry, was travelling at 21 knots. Were they to have

continued their course and speed, the vessels’ paths

would have taken them to within half a mile of one

another. As it was, at just over a mile apart, the

bridge teams started to question the assumptions

they had made about each other’s probable course of

action and started to implement course changes, but

not speed changes, that would, they believed, put a

greater distance between themselves. At 0952 they

collided.

7 INVESTIGATION OF THE CASE

Seafarers Mistake: it was because of failure to

maintain adequate distance; It means that ‘violation

of procedures’ (it was too late for assuming about

the actions of the other vessel in thick fog).

Seafarers Mistake: it was because of failure to re-

duce speed; it means that ‘violation of procedures’

(as a result of the speed of the craft in poor visibility,

thus they had no time to take action to avoid the col-

lision).

Seafarers Mistake: it was because of poor profes-

sional judgment; it means that ‘violation of collision

regulations’ (As the Rule stated that, when a vessel

can only ‘see’ another vessel on its radar and a risk

of collision exists, she shall take avoiding action in

ample time. Altering course at one mile or three

minutes before the collision, with 21 knots speed

was not in ample time).

As consequence of the report, fault of the colli-

sion was due to the Crew Resource Management or

Bridge Team Management errors. Through the offi-

cial report and investigation which had been carried

out by the Department of Transport regarding the in-

cident, the cause of accident was because of the op-

erator errors (the bridge team or the Master errors)

by the eighteen reasons as the official report (MAIB,

2003; pp. 43-44).

8 THE STCW CONVENTION

The Manila amendments are the result of nearly five

years of intensive debates and discussions on various

accessions also at the annual IMLA Conferences and

at IMEC gatherings. Although the outcome is not the

optimum, it is, however, an acceptable and practica-

ble instrument suited to further develop Maritime

English as an essential but relatively new knowledge

area in order to satisfy the new provisions and thus

the complex requirements of maritime industry. As

Poor use of…

Radar failure

Poor…

Index perience

Over working

Fatigue

Unfamiliarity…

Poor training

poor lookout

Bad decision…

Broke rules

Poor manning…

396

Prof.Trenkner (2010) emphasized on the outcome of

the Manila Conference which was not an optimum

result, further Prof.Ziaretie (2010) had more or less

similar idea in this field. It should be noted that sev-

eral attempts carried out in order to revise STCW95

convention through the Manila Conference 2010.

Nevertheless, the implementation of the revised

Convention will take time and a number of deficien-

cies kept in the Convention until the proposed

changes to be taken place.

In addition to the above explanation, regarding

the role of optimum training of MET based on

STCW Convention Prof.R.Prasad (2010) stated that

seafarers need to acquire comprehensive understand-

ing of technical facts through active learning pro-

cesses that enhances deep understanding of scientific

as well as social concepts and help develop tech-

nical, cognitive and social skills. Skills for

group/team work, good communications and resolv-

ing issues are as essential because they have to work

in such environment.

9 THE MARCON PROJECT

The MARCON is an improvement of maritime lec-

turers’ competencies project which is based on Lis-

bon European strategies fortune in order to maintain

the European maritime university system as world-

wide framework. It should be noted that the eEurope

has been launched as e-learning in 2001, therefore

communication and computerized technology be-

came the main component of maritime training. The

objective of this project has been stated by

Prof.R.Hanzu-pazara et al (2009) as follows: The

general objective of the MARCON project is repre-

sented by multidisciplinary research concerning ini-

tial and continuous formative of the lecturers from

maritime universities and providing of advancement

programs according with the maritime industry re-

quirements.

Although, around 40% of the present teaching

staff of Constanta Maritime University has pursued

this program, therefore the author believes that if all

maritime lecturers become familiar with the latest

technologies, advance computerized system and

simulation procedure, than their competencies in

maritime training will be improved in a great extent.

10 CONCLUSIONS

Many maritime accidents have been reported in the

last couple of decades, there were because of the

shortage of seafarers’ skill to supervise both re-

sources and crises. CRM training has been seen

gradually more as a fundamental part of the human

error management viewpoint. The International Mar-

itime Organization gave the impression of the re-

quire for resource management skills on board ships,

nevertheless the standards of competence and their

evaluation criteria are not fully formed similar to the

civil aviation. CRM training is a technique that has

been formulated for organizing people to arrange

maritime/bridge resources in order to avoid collision

at sea.

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