105
Addressing Human Factors in Ship Design
designed with no crew input or whatsoever ( Squire, 2007), most senior officers and
engineers on OSV A and B were involved in the process of designing and building
the vessel.
However, the crews know less of their vessel and what happened behind the screens.
They can no longer rely on their senses to understand the state of their ships. The way
they operate the vessel changes drastically. There is no wheel to steer the ship and no
traditional engine telegraph to regulate the speed on these OSVs. The crews operate
their vessel using joystick, mouse, track ball, buttons, keyboard and touch screen.
Therefore, special adaptation and familiarization are required due to the novelty of
the systems. Simulator-training has become necessary to operate these OSVs. Some
ergonomics-related issues were found: one engine console was built without leg space,
control buttons were located too far to reach from the crew’s normal position so they
must bend over or reach backwards to operate certain functions.
When the field surveys were conducted both vessels were in the process of maturing new technologies. On OSV A they were developing their DP system and on OSV
B they were testing a hybrid power system. As new technologies were in their development stage, errors, miscalculations and flaws took place.
New kinds of problems were exposed, related to the digitalization and human factors such as incompatibility issue, operating system expired, overloaded system and
hang, data invalidity, too much information presented on a screen and bugs. Flooding
of alarms, abundant communication and procedures were also identified as issues on
both OSVs.
Several cases can illustrate this. One officer told his story when he was operating
OSV A on DP alongside an installation, and he sensed that the vessel unexpectedly
began to move toward the installation. He shut down the DP system, took over the
control manually and backed the ship away from the installation. One hose that was
still connected snapped off. Later, the investigation revealed that the system assumed
the vessel position was 100 m away from the installation while in reality it was ‘ only’
20 m. The manufacturer explained: “… this has happened only once on the entire DP
X equipped fleet. We have found the root cause for this, and implemented a solution
for it. This failure will not happen again.” The statement implies that the particular
condition was not identified when the system was finalized and it took place. An
accident with a high hazard potential may have occurred. Fortunately, there was a
human operator who acted as the barrier at that time. The officer’s experience on
this DP incident is an example of how handling of cues and sensemaking can play
an important part to avoid major accidents at sea. Of course, not all incidents can be
detected and followed-up by the operator (– as later described in Sjoborg case below).
Another example from OSV B illustrates the importance of resilience. The ship
just finished loading and unloading process besides one installation and was preparing to maneuver to the next one. The officer on the bridge requested more power
from the thrusters. Unfortunately, the system could not handle the power request
and blackout occurred. The vessel was running on liquefied natural gas, which is
less responsive to variations in the power requirements. When the bridge demanded
power, the system automatically tried to switch over to diesel but failed. Fortunately,
OSV B is equipped with a DYNPOS-AUTRO, i.e. class 3 DP. The vessel has sufficient redundancy, i.e. loss of position should not be caused by any single failure
Addressing Human Factors in Ship Design
designed with no crew input or whatsoever ( Squire, 2007), most senior officers and
engineers on OSV A and B were involved in the process of designing and building
the vessel.
However, the crews know less of their vessel and what happened behind the screens.
They can no longer rely on their senses to understand the state of their ships. The way
they operate the vessel changes drastically. There is no wheel to steer the ship and no
traditional engine telegraph to regulate the speed on these OSVs. The crews operate
their vessel using joystick, mouse, track ball, buttons, keyboard and touch screen.
Therefore, special adaptation and familiarization are required due to the novelty of
the systems. Simulator-training has become necessary to operate these OSVs. Some
ergonomics-related issues were found: one engine console was built without leg space,
control buttons were located too far to reach from the crew’s normal position so they
must bend over or reach backwards to operate certain functions.
When the field surveys were conducted both vessels were in the process of maturing new technologies. On OSV A they were developing their DP system and on OSV
B they were testing a hybrid power system. As new technologies were in their development stage, errors, miscalculations and flaws took place.
New kinds of problems were exposed, related to the digitalization and human factors such as incompatibility issue, operating system expired, overloaded system and
hang, data invalidity, too much information presented on a screen and bugs. Flooding
of alarms, abundant communication and procedures were also identified as issues on
both OSVs.
Several cases can illustrate this. One officer told his story when he was operating
OSV A on DP alongside an installation, and he sensed that the vessel unexpectedly
began to move toward the installation. He shut down the DP system, took over the
control manually and backed the ship away from the installation. One hose that was
still connected snapped off. Later, the investigation revealed that the system assumed
the vessel position was 100 m away from the installation while in reality it was ‘ only’
20 m. The manufacturer explained: “… this has happened only once on the entire DP
X equipped fleet. We have found the root cause for this, and implemented a solution
for it. This failure will not happen again.” The statement implies that the particular
condition was not identified when the system was finalized and it took place. An
accident with a high hazard potential may have occurred. Fortunately, there was a
human operator who acted as the barrier at that time. The officer’s experience on
this DP incident is an example of how handling of cues and sensemaking can play
an important part to avoid major accidents at sea. Of course, not all incidents can be
detected and followed-up by the operator (– as later described in Sjoborg case below).
Another example from OSV B illustrates the importance of resilience. The ship
just finished loading and unloading process besides one installation and was preparing to maneuver to the next one. The officer on the bridge requested more power
from the thrusters. Unfortunately, the system could not handle the power request
and blackout occurred. The vessel was running on liquefied natural gas, which is
less responsive to variations in the power requirements. When the bridge demanded
power, the system automatically tried to switch over to diesel but failed. Fortunately,
OSV B is equipped with a DYNPOS-AUTRO, i.e. class 3 DP. The vessel has sufficient redundancy, i.e. loss of position should not be caused by any single failure