Spreading the word on safety

By Hugh Williams, Chief Executive of IMCA

Hugh Williams, Chief Executive of IMCA – International Marine Contractors Association - describes how his organisation is working to raise safety standards worldwide.

Safety is of prime importance in our industry. It is essential that there is a full understanding of the need for self-regulation as a vital tool and its implementation by those who understand its challenges and proper solutions.  That is a key reason why IMCA was formed in 1995 and has steadily expanded throughout the years.

IMCA seeks to:

• Strive for the highest possible standards with a balance of risk and cost in relation to: Health and safety; technology; quality and efficiency; environmental awareness and protection
• Achieve and sustain self-regulation in the industry
• Ease the free movement of equipment and personnel globally
• Achieve equitable contracting regimes
• Provide the framework for training, certification, competence and recruitment   to support and sustain the industry globally
• Resolve industry issues
• Promote co-operation across the industry

It encourages improvements in quality, health, safety, and environmental and technical standards through the publication of guidance and information notes, codes of practice, and by other appropriate means – including safety cards and videos (the latter with subtitles in many languages including Russian); and our major annual seminar and various subject-specific workshops and smaller seminars. Members receive regular briefing notes on technical issues, regulatory developments, and news appropriate to their own activities.

Self-regulation is vital

In common with many other contractor trade associations, self-regulation has always been an IMCA goal. Trade associations do not regulate in the way that legislators do.  They provide guidance to members and work to update and introduce new guidelines wherever there appears to be a need.  Members working to those guidelines is a way of ‘self-regulating’, rather than looking to clients or government for regulation.  Self-regulation is the logical result of action by industry participants to address a number of concerns.

If an industry does not self-regulate then some other body will impose its own regulation, either in the form of government legislation or through client requirements.  If this happens, contractors face the prospect of each client and each government stipulating its own, varying requirements.  This causes considerable strain to each contractor and extra, unnecessary costs.  The strain includes finding out the different requirements, tendering with allowance for them and then complying with them for each project and for contractors who often work for different clients all around the world it is a potentially repetitive, expensive and avoidable burden.  As it is, contractors working in the Barents Sea can use the same IMCA Guidelines as those off Sakhalin Island or in the Caspian Sea.

Technical reports and guidance

As a trade association we produce guidelines for a wide variety of marine operations.  At first these were for diving and dynamic positioning. We then went on to publish guidance for safety, training and competence, marine, ROV and survey operations. In an industry, which is highly regulated, because of its economic, social, environmental and political profile, IMCA has established a respected list of ‘industry guidelines’ that has become widely used and accepted.

The spread of IMCA’s guidelines becomes ever greater as more members join the Association and IMCA produces more documents.  In addition, the penetration of the documents increases gradually as clients require the guidelines to be used as a condition of contract.  The larger clients in recent years have moved towards using a single approach worldwide for all their offices and projects in all regions. The approach used is often based on IMCA guidelines.  In addition, as the industry moves into new geographical zones, where often there are few detailed government requirements for marine construction, IMCA guidelines have been used as an available, acceptable reflection of industry ‘good practice’ for the government or local client to use without having to “start all over again” from a blank sheet of paper.

Currently IMCA publishes some 200 guidance documents and technical reports.  They are very much a definition of what IMCA stands for, including widely recognised diving and ROV codes of practice, DP documentation, marine good practice guidance, the ‘Common Marine Inspection Document’, safety recommendations, outline training syllabi and the IMCA competence scheme guidance.  In addition to the range of printed guidance documents, IMCA also produces safety promotional materials and circulates information notes and safety flashes.

In pursuit of efficiency and incident reporting

Learning from our mistakes is a key part of business improvement and the pursuit of efficiency. Avoiding repeating an incident or accident saves lives, time and money.

IMCA has been at the forefront of trying to help members help themselves in this way with two separate but connected initiatives – incident reporting and safety flashes.

We maintain a database on DP incident reports from dynamically positioned vessels stretching back over the past 25 years.  User-friendly incident reporting forms help to make the task relatively easy for our members. Each year the reports are collated and an analysis of the incidents is issued.  This helps establish trends in incidents for discussion with vessel operators, equipment suppliers, training establishments and others in order to address particular issues.  The results have played an important role in keeping the DP fleet operational, safe and acceptable to authorities by feeding into improvements in designs, procedures and training.

Now we are seeking to mirror the achievements of the well-established DP system with collection of data on incidents involving lifting operations and equipment – a new project, but with the same aims of helping members help themselves.

There is, of course, nothing particularly new about safety flashes and alerts – a wide range of organisations generate, receive and circulate them.  Those issued by IMCA are focused on members’ work in offshore construction, which can be vessel-related.  Work on a vessel is often different from onshore because of confined spaces, multiple hazards and vessel motion.  The safety flashes also cover unique equipment and operations: diving, ROVs, engine rooms, heavy-duty cranes and winches and specialist survey tools. Even so, many accidents still stem from simple avoidable mistakes.

The safety flash system aims to let colleagues know about an incident or newly discovered hazard and to share experience, learning and action to try to avoid someone else repeating the same mistakes.  Our published safety statistics indicate that this system has contributed to the early dramatic improvements and continued steady improvements in the annual figures – but “zero accidents” is still a good way off, and we urge all in the industry to continue to work towards this goal.

As with the DP and lifting incident reporting system, any safety incident shared with IMCA is anonymised and checked with the contributor and, where relevant, organisations such as equipment suppliers, before being issued.  Although this industry is huge, there are sometimes only a few suppliers of certain pieces of specialist equipment.  Sharing concerns about equipment quickly with colleagues throughout the industry really helps avoid future incidents.

Joining forces

IMCA has formed a Security Task Force to work on security related topics. These include issues such as personnel in transit, health, piracy, the implications of the International Ship & Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code and general security in the workplace and onboard vessels. 

The advent of the ISPS Code, increased awareness of terrorist and piracy issues, and heightened health concerns have led our members to ask us to bring all manner of maritime security issues under the banner of our newly established task force.  Its establishment provides us with the opportunity to work together with our members’ clients (primarily oil and gas exploration and production companies) in various regions, share our concerns and explore the common interests of both clients and their contractors. 

Through our members and their clients this will also help us to encourage host governments to play a more active role.  We believe that our member companies have a great deal of valuable knowledge to share – the Task Force is a useful means for helpful dialogue across the board aimed at increasing safety and security levels for everyone’s benefit.

The most recent development within the Task Force is the publication of ‘Guidance on Travel Security’, which is being followed by a convenient pocket card for individuals summarising key points from this guidance.

Work is also proceeding on a number of further projects including guidance for the verification of third party personnel; guidance on threat risk assessment in respect of security issues; a guide to the ISPS code; and guidance on a common security audit format. 

Hugh Williams was appointed Chief Executive of IMCA in 2002. Prior to joining IMCA Hugh Williams had worked in marine contracting and consultancy with responsibilities in engineering, project management, business development and on the commercial side. His previous employers were Heerema Marine Contractors, and consultants Global Maritime and Noble Denton. This followed training as a Chartered Civil Engineer at ports and harbours consultants, Rendel Palmer and Tritton, with a period on the Thames Barrier site on the resident engineer’s staff, which included diver training at Fort Bovisand.

IMCA is the international trade association representing well over 300 offshore, marine and underwater engineering companies in over 35 countries. It was formed from the amalgamation of AODC (The International Association of Offshore Diving Contractors) founded in 1972 and DPVOA (The Dynamic Positioning Vessel Owners Association) founded in 1990.