At the heart of a safe marine operation is ensuring your company has a Safety Management System that’s appropriate to the size and nature of the business and its operations whilst meeting, and possibly exceeding, the regulatory requirements within the sector – that’s where we come in.
“A Safety Management System (SMS) is a systematic and proactive approach to managing safety risks. Risk management activities are at the heart of SMS, including the identification of safety issues, risk assessments and risk mitigation. It is supported by a strong assurance function that monitors compliance and performance as well as managing changes.
To be effective, the SMS needs the right policies, processes and procedures in place, in addition to the safety leadership to enable it to perform.
Training also plays a key role in implementing effective safety management systems. Training maintains personnel competencies, the sharing of safety information across the organisation, and with external organisations where there is a safety interface.
An effective safety management system is woven into the fabric of an organisation and its culture.” – The Civil Aviation Authority
Whilst this quote is from outside our sector, we in the marine world can learn a lot from the aviation sector and its relentless approach to ensuring the safety of those it takes airborne. Within the marine world, and especially the sub 24m vessel world, its fair to say that for many years many marine businesses have operated with what might be described as a ‘light touch’ when it comes to the subject of Standard Operating Procedures and Risk Assessments along with the training associated with those. Numerous incidents over many years have led the Marine Accident and Investigation Branch (‘MAIB’) and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to focus attention on this area and the advent of Workboat Code 3 and the revised MGN280 make it 110% clear that a comprehensive SMS must sit at the heart of the way that businesses operate.
It’s against this backdrop that our expertise comes to the fore as Paul Glatzel (who leads our team providing this service to our clients) has been involved in many of the criminal and civil investigations and prosecutions in recent years in this sector where the SMS – or often absence of – was at the heart of the investigation and court cases. Paul’s expertise and experience in this area is outlined on another page on this website – Here.
Alongside this work as a Marine Expert Witness and Consultant Paul and the team have for many years reviewed the operations of marine businesses and both advised them on required improvements to their SMS and also produced these for them.
Our SMS related services to marine businesses operating sub 24m vessels can be summarised as:
- Initial no obligation review of current SMS, SOPs, RAs etc
- Advice to Operators on sector requirements and benchmarking of sector requirements versus other sectors and operators.
- Review and update of businesses’ Risk Assessments to ensure that all relevant risks are captured across all relevant operations. Risk Assessments produced in accepted ‘best’ format.
- Production of full Safety Management System to include full Standard Operations Procedures embracing realistic management and mitigation of all risks.
- Creation of training, drills and recording matrix to ensure business meets and exceeds its training obligations with an appropriate audit trail.
- Delivery of training to Skippers, Crew and management to ensure buy-in to SMS. This can include ‘desktop’ training exercises to test reactions to incidents and prove effectiveness of SMS setup.
- SMS and all supporting procedures can be created paper based or more frequently either hosted on ‘off the shelf’ products (eg Sharepoint) or via dedicated and bespoke apps created for the particular client.
- Cyber Security reviews and support to achieve Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus certification.
- Advice and guidance on meeting the requirements of the Small Vessels – Electronic Charting Systems (‘SV-ECS’) standard.
- Ongoing reviews of operator/skippers and crew compliance with produced SMS.
- Review and reporting to business of changes affecting the operation including the impact of new/revised MGNs, MAIB reports, relevant court cases etc.
- Annual review and update of SMS, SOPs, RAs etc.
“Paul Glatzel is a powerboat, workboat, motorboat and jetski/personal watercraft expert. Paul is a Royal Yachting Association Instructor Trainer and Examiner with experience in producing expert witness reports for civil and criminal cases and appearing in various Crown, Coroners and Magistrates Courts and at the Old Bailey. He couples this expert witness work with instructing and working to support businesses by producing and reviewing their SMS/SOPs etc. He is author of the RYA Powerboat Handbook and RYA Advanced Powerboat Handbook.
He has extensive experience afloat in civilian, commercial and military craft in the UK, Europe, US, Middle East, Antarctica and the Caribbean. Circumnavigated the UK and Ireland in sub 10m powerboats. Paul is one of the few marine experts to have been invited to attend Cranfield University’s – Applied Marine Accident Investigation course. This course is recognised world wide as the course for those involved in investigating and reporting on marine accidents.”
Paul and the team can be contacted on +44 (0)1202 686666 or via sms@powerboattraininguk.co.uk
