The challenge.
Condor Ferries understands that Bridge Resource Management (BRM) is critical to their crew and guests going home in one piece. As part of an ongoing drive to enhance BRM skills across the Condor fleet and to ensure consistent application across their four vessels, we were invited to join Condor Ferries for a year-long program of BRM implementation.
BRM is very much a cultural issue, which makes it far more challenging to implement successfully than most technical skills, such as firefighting or the use of navigation equipment. It requires a change of culture which accepts human fallibility as inevitable and embraces the need to, therefore, put in place structures of teamwork and mutual cross-checking to ensure that those mistakes are caught before anything goes wrong.
The solution.
Instigating a strong culture of BRM drives navigational safety and therefore vessel safety. However, BRM implementation projects often fail because they don’t seek buy-in from the crew and don’t ensure consistency of application across multiple vessels and over time.
Three components are needed to avoid this; one, prioritisation by management, supported by clear procedures; two, a training program to ensure that the crew all understand the procedures and are working to the same end; and three, an ongoing program of onboard observation to support consistent application onboard.
Our approach to supporting this project spanned all three components. Firstly, we engaged with Condor to understand their intentions for the project, including a cultural review of management’s approach to BRM implementation. We also supported MSA Solent’s fantastic simulation team to ensure that what was being taught in the simulator was harmonised with what we were expecting to see onboard.
The final and most in-depth component was the onboard observations. Our mission was to unobtrusively witness onboard operations and make recommendations for ongoing improvement which could be fed back to management and the crews onboard.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to go onboard a vessel for a short period of time and try to implement change without first getting the cultural buy-in from the people who work there. That is why our approach is always about seeking to listen and learn from the crew, understand their approach to BRM principles and gradually seek to support further engagement and more-consistent application over time.
Taking an integrated approach makes for a successful BRM implementation project and ensures that the crew are always operating at the top of their game.