Abstract
During the last few decades, technology advances have allowed the exploration and exploitation of a large (and still increasing) number of Oil and Gas fields situated offshore, requiring the use of, inter alia, floating production units, supply vessels, oil tankers and gas carriers. Consequently, the Oil and Gas industries have been increasingly interacting with the Maritime industry and, for the benefit of Health and Safety at sea, there is now a real necessity for H&S knowledge and best practice to be shared between the two communities. The main objective of this paper is to present some of the recent developments made by a classification society to design safer and more efficient vessels by integrating human factors in the design of their machinery spaces.
It is the role of classification societies, as technical depositaries, to provide the maritime industry with some practical standards and guidance to increase the effectiveness of shipboard operations and to prevent the occurrence of occupational hazards in the machinery spaces.
Thus, Bureau Veritas has developed a novel approach based on Human Factors principles, risk analysis and accident investigations. In this approach, the ship is viewed with a holistic approach in which the hull (in the wider sense), the ship's equipment and the seafarers are constantly interacting. An important aspect of the work we are carrying out is the integration of users’ characteristics and requirements in the development of design standards for the machinery spaces. This integration is a key factor for the successful completion and validation our research study. The study can be spilt up into five steps:
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Acquiring the pertinent data regarding the design of machinery spaces;
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Identifying and ranking the occupational hazards one can face in machinery spaces;
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Comparative studies between the planned procedures and the practical necessities faced by crew;
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Studying the activity of seafarers through the framework of human-machine interaction for mitigating so-called "human errors" and;
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Deriving requirements and best practice for the design and arrangement of machinery spaces.
