Nautical Institute lines up Plimsoll Award
Bridget Hogan, NI, Captain George Sandberg NI, and right, John Gormley, editor of Professional Mariner who made the presentation.
The London based Nautical Institute has won the 2010 Samuel Plimsoll Award for its outstanding services to the marine industry, which include developing training and codes of practice, as well as disseminating important safety information.
The award is named after Samuel Plimsoll, a British Member of Parliament who strove to end the dangerous practice of overloading vessels. His efforts culminated in legislation passed in 1876 requiring load lines, or Plimsoll marks, to be visible on the hulls of seagoing ships. The awards honour those who, in the spirit of Samuel Plimsoll, make the world a better and safer place for mariners.
Founded by a group of master mariners in 1971, the Nautical Institute has helped mariners improve their performance by raising training standards and disseminating information crucial to greater operational efficiency and safety.
For example, 20 years ago, the Institute recognized that no operational standards existed for what was then a new technology, dynamic positioning systems. In response, the Institute developed a code of practice and a curriculum for training and certifying DP operators. Today schools around the world accredited by the Nautical Institute provide the certification training, while the organisation itself administers the logbook programme that verifies the mariner’s progress on the path to DP certification.
One of the organisation’s most notable contributions to improved safety is the programme that makes it possible for the industry to learn from dangerous incidents and implement changes to avoid accidents in the future.
This system encourages mariners to report near misses in which they were involved without having their identities publicly revealed. As more than one person has noted, anonymous contributions like these are important to gain an understanding of current issues, away from the considerations of insurers, legal liabilities and fear of recrimination which can distort the picture. Those reports are then analyzed by the Nautical Institute and disseminated in its Seaways magazine.
This approach, which permits the industry to recognize and correct problems before they culminate in disaster, is one of the many activities that the Nautical Institute has initiated, leading to the organisation winning the 2010 Samuel Plimsoll Award for Outstanding Service.
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