Sailsafe News

Norwegian Cruise Line on Wednesday announced it plans to redeploy eight additional vessels for U.S. and international voyages starting this fall, more than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic brought the cruise industry to a virtual standstill.Passengers will once again sail aboard Norwegian Breakaway, Encore, Escape, Pearl, Jewel, Sun, Spirit and Norwegian's Pride of America to explore Hawaii, the Caribbean, Panama Canal, Asia and more. These ships are scheduled to recommence operations from October through February.Earlier this week…

British Columbia Ferry Services (BC Ferries) informed that its President & CEO Mark Collins is the latest executive to join the BC Safety Charter, a move that highlights the company’s commitment to improving and promoting workplace safety.The signing ceremony took place this morning at BC Ferries’ head office in Victoria, British Columbia, said a press release from the provides all major passenger and vehicle ferry services for coastal and island communities in the Canadian province of British Columbia.“Safety is our highest value. Maintaining a safe environment for our customers and employees requires our continued focus and diligence,” said Mark Collins, BC Ferries’ President and CEO.

The challenges and opportunities posed by alternative fuels, safety management and social media dominated Interferry’s 42nd annual conference in Split, Croatia, where a record 370 delegates shared insights on ship technologies, safety issues including cyber security and the customer experience. Attendance at last week’s conference represented 210 ferry operators and suppliers from 27 countries. Mediterranean ferry operators voiced their concerns on meeting the 0.5 percent sulphur emissions cap due in 2020. Minoan Lines managing director Antonios Maniadakis complained that using low sulphur fuel would increase costs by €2 million per year.

Interferry has unveiled a strategic plan promising to put safety issues at the heart of its work as the voice of the worldwide ferry industry. The pledge came at the global trade association’s 41st annual conference in Manila – a venue chosen to spotlight the challenges of domestic ferry safety in developing nations. According to Interferry, the plan signals its overriding ambition to help lift ferry safety in all parts of the world to the very high standard already in place in North America and Europe, where casualties in recent decades have been extremely rare.

The Worldwide Ferry Safety Association’s conference on Ferry Safety and Technology, underway today, has featured sessions on Vessels & Landings, Marine Weather, and Training Challenges and Innovative Solutions. The panel on Training, moderated by Captain Jim DeSimone from the New York City Department of Transportation, included talks by Murray Goldberg (Marine Learning Systems) and Bill Anderson, Jr. from the Seattle-based Pacific Marine Institute (PMI). Goldberg spoke about success at BC Ferries in implementing an e-Learning program. According to Goldberg, research across many industries has shown that a combination of e-Learning, combined with a personal touch, is a far superior mode of training.

BC Ferries has improved its safety record, operational practices – and at the same time, its bottom line. In 2007, British Columbia Ferry Services Inc. (BC Ferries) initiated a union-management joint endeavor to create a world-class safety culture. This program, coined SailSafe, addressed a wide variety of safety-related aspects of BC Ferries’ culture and operational practices. By almost any measure, SailSafe has been a tremendous successf. Although difficult to precisely correlate any one of the many facets of SailSafe to operational statistics…

A review of the ferry industry’s latest challenges and opportunities attracted a record 340 delegates to Vancouver last week for the 39th annual Interferry conference. The global trade association event exposed a string of concerns – notably over punitive safety and environmental regulations – but also highlighted the financial potential of new routes, onboard shopping incentives and the use of LNG fuel. Alongside sessions on the future of the industry, Canada-based CEO Len Roueche outlined a vision for maintaining Interferry’s influential lobbying role among politicians and regulators.

The conference organizers inform that In a further response to the sinking of the South Korean ferry 'Sewol' in April, safety issues will be centre stage at Interferry’s 39th annual conference, which takes place in Vancouver from October 4-8, 2014. Prompted by the incident, the trade association is already in dialogue with the IMO about assisting in efforts to improve domestic ferry safety. Now these and other cooperative safety initiatives will feature in a wide-ranging conference agenda addressing the industry’s major regulatory, commercial and technical challenges. The IMO’s latest safety strategy will be examined by special guest speaker Jeff Lantz, US Coastguard regulations director and chairman of the IMO Council.

This is the second in a series of Maritime Reporter and Engineering News articles on Safety Culture in the maritime industry. The first article, which appeared in our October, 2013 edition, discussed the importance of management leadership, training, measurement, a focus on learning rather than blame, and continuous reflection on safety. In this second article, safety culture expert Captain John Wright discusses the key ingredients of a healthy safety culture. I had the good fortune of meeting Captain Wright because of his involvement with the BC Ferries SailSafe project.

“Safety Culture” is one of those terms that is used a lot in the maritime industry. We all think it is important, and every operator wants a “good” safety culture. But how does one get it, and then keep it once it is there? This is the first of a pair of articles looking at safety culture in the maritime industry. What is Safety Culture? The IMO tells us “An organization with a ‘safety culture’ is one that gives appropriate priority to safety ... This is a fair, but arguably limited description. Safety culture is not something that a vessel operator either has or does not have.

BC Ferries cut time loss injuries in half; it reduced serious injuries by two-thirds; it slashed annual insurance claims costs by more than three-quarters. What are you waiting for? Can a vessel operator completely reshape its safety culture? Can it transform communications, training, operational practices and even employee engagement? And most importantly, if an operator is able to make such sweeping changes, what measurable difference will it make? It turns out it can make a huge difference to almost every meaningful key performance indicator…