03 Dec. 2015; At Sea.

The weather on the North Atlantic looked threatening for a moment, at least on the weather forecast yesterday but it all fell apart and today we have a nice smooth ride towards Half Moon Cay. It is windy out here but it is coming from the stern and as the ship is going full speed, the relative wind has been reduced to just a gentle breeze.

Something which is seldom highlighted in the world is that the cruise industry is a very safe industry. In a similar way as the airline industry. Although the whole world takes notice when an airplane crashes or there is a mishap with a cruise ship, but in percentages it is much safer to make a cruise than to cross the road in an average city.  That safety comes from the quality of the people on board but also the self-controls each respected company imposes upon itself.

Parts of those self-controls have to do with safe working while on board. We want each crew member to come out with 10 fingers and go home again with 10 fingers as well. And there is plenty of opportunity for it not to happen, as apart from the normal dangers you would have ashore, there is also the extra danger in the fact that our work place moves. The deck is always in movement (even if it is only a tiny bit) unless we are docked in port.

To achieve this Holland America has put in place a whole string of precautions and requirements to which everybody has to adhere to before any work takes place. If a job has to be done, then there is first a Risk Assessment process which identifies how it has to be done, what could go wrong and what is needed to avoid it from going wrong. Either the work itself or the consequences for the person carrying out the work, or the people in the vicinity. And as we are a cruise ship there are always plenty of people around and quite often in locations where they should not be.

The next thing is to explain to the crew member and if needed give training about how the job needs to be done.  Then there is the equipment and finally the securing of the area so the job can be carried out in a safe way for everybody.  This can be a lot of work but it needs to be done and it works.

The challenge lies in carrying out jobs which are repeating itself as there is the chance, almost the certainty, for complacency to creep in.  The human mind is forgetful and if nothing went wrong during the last 50 times then nothing will go wrong the 51^st. time and thus a little deviation from the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) will not do any harm. But it does. To mitigate against this danger we have these SOP’s so we can train and drill fleet wide to the same standards.

Our biggest challenge lies in the fact that most of our crew come from countries where the safety standards are ……..let’s say flexible. Then they enter our culture and suddenly they are involved in a lot of fussing about something nobody at home would even think about. They learn of course and the apply the knowledge and the routines but we sometimes see that after a vacation a lot of that carefully cultivated safety culture has slipped away again. And thus we start anew.

To keep the routine ingrained and the focus sharp we have two standard routines. It is the 15 minute trainer whereby short (less than 15 minute long) instructions/trainings are given to a target group and we have tool box discussions which takes place before a job is carried out.  Safety at work is by far the most important thing we have on board as it touches every routine we carry out. I consider it so important that each of my students has to do a 15 minute Train the Trainer in rotation in front of the class and explain one element of all the safety issues out there. It helps with public speaking, it helps with understanding the equipment and it ingrains from the start that safe work starts with thinking about it.

Tomorrow we are in Half Moon Cay. We are supposed to have nice weather with a gentle breeze and we are the only ship.  Last week the weather was not that good but I think tomorrow I will send the class to the beach to observe the ship from the island side for a while.