Risk, and a dance with the devil
“The devil is in the detail”, says Christopher Bailey of BP Shipping. This sums up the view of many concrning the fact that any moves toward one set of standards often leads to an issue with another. But what is the IMO to do?
After all, there’s no standing still in the rising tide of innovation.
The central issue behind much of the talking at the IMO’s recent Future of Ship Safety symposium is that there’s both a push and a pull between technology and regulation. While regulation is often the driver behind innovative technology this very fact adds a layer of complexity and can mean the adoption of technology that is not mature.
Mr Bailey went on to say: “We have to understand the impact on our crews. Immature technology doesn’t always translate that well into the marine environment.”
There is a dual nature to the challenges. As the ships shave more off their performance to get the desired efficiencies, it leaves less of a margin around operations. More than one speaker pointed out that alongside the awareness, competence and training of crew, there’s also a need to make sure that the new high performance technologies are safe and operable.
And of course there is the detritus of rules which are no longer applicable. “We need to get rid of the obsolete outmoded and outdated rules or we will exhaust ourselves, said Vaughan Pomeroy of IMAREST. “We also have to avoid generating the wrong incentives.”
So, how can the industry find a solution? Especially since, as Mr Pomeroy explained, the pace of technology is changing so fast. “We don’t have the data back from the last innovation that went out into the field before we go and put another one in.”
It seems that many people, like Wu Jiameng of China’s MDRI and Jim Peachey of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, believe that while at present IMO’s goal based standards may carry on using a largely prescriptive based approach for mainstream vessels, novel or alternative designs are reaching out for the further use of risk-based analysis. After all, some of IMOs prescriptive regulations are already being bolstered by risk-based terms for things like the ISM and the High Speed Craft codes, so the principle is already well established.
The reasoning is that while prescriptive terms are simpler, by themselves they can too easily fall foul of a number of problems. Firstly, said Mr Pomeroy, these prescriptive regulations have often been “developed in silos” without reference to each other.
The reason they can so easily miss the mark of their intention is because the reasoning behind them is “implicit, not explicit” added Mr Peachey. Therefore the driving rationale is not actually embedded in the rule itself.
Secondly, by their nature they are reactive, not proactive. “These regulations are reliant on lagging, rather than leading factors relying on reported accidents to expose the shortcomings, and they can too easily be outpaced by new technology and new hazards”, Mr Peachey explained.
In contrast, Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) methodology “provides a very transparent structure, you can trace the assumptions and build on the resolutions”, he said.
However, Mr Peachey and many others pointed out that risk-based methodologies rely heavily on thorough reporting, something missing in today’s environment. But more information on root causes and casualty details are needed. As Mr Peachey explained, the details usually stop just short of telling us “what actually caused the accident”. There is, alongside this, the understanding that such reporting might need a fundamental change of maritime culture and the realisation that it is now a necessity.
Moreover, it seems that different ways to capture information need to be developed, along with the goodwill of the community. It’s this information that will tell us not just about ship operation, but also about the effectiveness of the rules themselves.
Contradictions and consequences
It has been noted that there are a lot of regulations that fall foul of the law of unintended consequences.
Wu Jiameng of China’s Marine Design & Research Institute pointed out that “new requirements have a potential for either correlative or contradictory impacts”. Both he and Kathy Stanzel, Intertanko’s MD, said that at one point the EEDI ship efficiency index stood in danger of making a reduction in power an attractive option for ships, reducing their ability to cope in adverse conditions. Ms Stanzel also added that there could potentially be a (literally) explosive issue resulting from hydrogen generated by some ballast water treatment units.
In fact, Ms Stanzel goes so far as to say that much of the industry’s perceived unwillingness to jump onboard environmental initiatives isn’t so much about a cash strapped sector bent on finding ways to stymie a costly process, but some suspicion that the new technology isn’t always “mature or fit for purpose”. The other direct challenge laid on the table is that the same thing could be said about some of the regulations too.
Despite the issue with the present system, all agree that whatever changes take place they need to happen at IMO level because the alternative is disjointed regulation, and that’s something nobody wants.
By Stevie Knight
