PROTOCOLO DE CARGA

4.3 INTRODUCTION TO THE CASES

In section 3.3.2, the choice of the two company cases was justified. This section introduces the two cases in order to better understand the parties involved in communication between shore departments and their ships. It is limited to a brief explanation of the company's basic information, its safety policy and objectives and its structure and functions relevant to the research topic.

4.3.1 Company 1

Company 1 (C1) is affiliated to its Group Company. The Group Company is a listed company dedicated to oil and chemical transportation. In the Group Company, the there are three separate fleets: the fleet carrying ocean-going crude oil; fleet carrying international clean oil products; and the fleet carrying chemicals, liquefied gas, and asphalt. By the end of 2010, the Group Company owned about 50 vessels of various types with a total capacity of about 2 million DWT and annual carriage volume of more than 30 million tons.

C1 was established in 1994 by its Group Company and a domestic petrochemical company located in the same region. Since 1997, when the Group Company was listed, the chemical fleet has been expanded significantly. It became the largest chemical tanker company in China in early 2000s. After that, C1 experienced several years of stagnation in its development owing to unexpected loss in its business. In 2006, C1 became a subsidiary fully controlled by the Group Company.

The company has kept adjusting its fleet since its foundation. New ships were introduced while old ships were sold off. By the end of 2010, the company owned about 15 chemical tankers. There are two large size sister ships with a tonnage of more than 12,000 DWT and the rest are all medium size ships, with the smallest one about 3,000 DWT. The majority of its fleet is IMO type II tankers with cargo tank coating materials of epoxy resin, phenolic resin, or polyurethane so that ships meet the requirement for carrying different types of chemicals. The cargoes carried cover a wide range of categories, for example, those derived from aromatics, esters, acids and aldehydes. A few IMO I tankers with pure stainless steel cargo holds have been bought in recent years. These ships are able to carry extremely toxic

cargoes with highly demanding storage conditions such phenol, which I saw on S1 before my sailing began. Presently, the majority of the ships were built after 2000. The fleet was mainly registered with Chinese nationality, although a few were registered in Hong Kong.

The major trading areas are in west Asia Pacific region. The two ships I sailed were registered in China and they mainly sailed in East and South East Asia.

The Policy and Objectives of OHSM

C1 set up an OHSMS when the company was founded. The system was independent from that of its Group Company. The system has been revised several times even since and the present version has been in operation since the end of 2008. The system was named as 'Quality, Safety and Environment Management System' (QSEMS) in accordance with the ISM Code, NSM Code, ISO 9001:2000 and ISO14001:2004. In addition, the System considered the standards from OHSAS18001, TMSA (Tanker Management and Self Assessment Guide) and VIQ. The QSEMS is regarded as a statutory document in which the company’s OHSM policy, corresponding objectives and management commitment are clearly stated. The safety policy statement of the company is ‘Human Oriented, Quality Service, Environment Protection and Safety Ensurence’. In order to quantify and measure the achievements of the safety policy, the company accordingly laid down detailed objectives. They had a wide coverage which included its service quality, safety and environment protection, customers demand, scientific management and continuous improvement etc. All the objectives shall comply with the standards of international conventions, national legislations, and industrial guidelines. In line with each of these objectives, there is an affirmative statement or numerical value attached for the purpose of measurement and assessment. Key items are summarised in Table 4.

Table 4: The Objectives of OHSM (C1)

Management Objective 1) to provide safety practices and safe working environment for ship operation;

2) to take preventive measures to deal with identified risks; and 3) to continuously improve ship shore personnel’s safety management skills and safety and environment protection emergency reaction capability.

Safety Objective No significant accidents, aiming at zero accidents and zero

pollution.

Environment Protection Objective

All discharged liquids should meet the standard set in the MARPOL^viii.

Inspection Outcome Objective

Rate of ship detention by PSC: zero; rate of passing oil majors inspection: 90%.

Health Objective Rate of casualty is zero; work-related injury is no more than one.

Customer Satisfaction Objective

Less than two claims or complaints.

The Ultimate Objective To achieve zero accidents, zero pollution through thorough implementation of the QSEMS; and

To ensure safety at sea, prevent casualties, and avoid ocean environmental pollution and loss of property.

According to the vice general manager in charge of safety, all the ships in C1 passed the inspection from at least one of the oil majors and international industrial organisations such as BP, Shell, and CDI. The company claims to have a sound organisational structure, and a group of experienced senior managers and professionals. The company has kept good records on safety, environment protection, and service quality. The company has never had some major ship damage or marine engine damage accidents, ocean pollution accidents and personnel casualties. Although the management did not provide me with the formal records in relation to the reported incidents, injuries compensation payments etc., an overall impression of my field work in the Company showed its strong commitment towards effective operation and continuous improvement of their QSEMS so as to achieve the quality, safety and environment protection objectives stated above.

The Structure and Functions

To better understand the structure of the company, its organisational chart is given below (Figure 2). To be noted, in consideration of its relevance, the financial department was omitted on the chart. Also, the business (cargo canvassing) department was not shown on the chart, since all the cargo canvassing work was done by its Group Company. The major responsibilities at each level are summarised hereafter.

Figure 2: The Organisational Chart (C1)

General Manager

The general manager presides over all work in the company. He is fully responsible for setting up the organisational structure and the function assignment for each of the sections (units). He takes the leading role in establishing, approving, implementing, and reviewing the QSEMS. He is the key person for providing efficient resources for the operation of the system, as well as for providing qualified personnel, a good work environment and needed training.

Vice General Manager (Safety)

The vice general manager (safety) is in charge of marine affairs, as well as safety management in the company. In this company, he is also the safety supervisor in-chief, equivalent to the designated person stipulated in the ISM Code and is the manager’s representative in the ISO9001:2000 and ISO14001:2004. He is responsible for monitoring the operation of the company’s QSEMS; for ensuring that ship-shore communication

GENERAL MANAGER

channels are open and clear; for providing ships with sufficient resources as well as shore support; and for making sure of the effectiveness of quality, safety and environment related management activities. He is the immediate leader of the safety and quality department and the marine affairs department.

Vice General Manager (Marine Technical Affairs)

The vice general manager is in charge of marine technical affairs for the company (ships).

His responsibilities mainly include the organisation of ship’s maintenance and repair and the control of its quality. He is also responsible for monitoring whether the shore-based support to ships is in place. He is the immediate leader of the marine engineering department.

Safety Supervisor in-Chief

The safety supervisor in-chief is responsible for safety management of ships as well as shore officers. As mentioned, the vice general manager in charge of safety also plays this role in OHSM. He is responsible for establishing communication channels between company’s senior management and the ships; for organising ship visits and safety inspections; for ensuring resources and personnel in place in safety and anti-pollution activities; for responding and verifying major non-compliance events, for internal and external audits; for organising investigations into accidents and near miss cases; and for verifying the effectiveness of corrective and improvement measures.

Safety and Quality Department

The department takes the major role in drafting and revising the QSEMS; for designing the ship-shore QSEMS monitoring inspection syllabus and checklist; for organising company’s ship-shore internal and external audit; for safety information collection and dissemination to ships; for locating crew responsibilities for non-compliance, accidents, and near miss cases; for organising cause analysis and verifying effectiveness of follow-up measures; and for investigating and analysing customer claims and levels of satisfaction.

Marine Affairs Department

The marine affairs department is responsible for the safety on deck department onboard ships. The department is responsible for organising guide captains to inspect, supervise and instruct crew’s shipboard safe operation, as well as cargo safety operations (including

awareness of cargo features, cargo tank washing quality, risk assessment, and the use of safe working protective devices etc.); for providing support to safety related problems onboard ships; for contacting and coordinating oil majors inspections; for participating in incident investigations; and for evaluating captains’ and officer’s work and making suggestions about crew arrangements.

Marine Engineering Department

The marine engineering department is responsible for organising chief engineers to conduct safety inspections and supervision onboard; for auditing ship’s maintenance plans and arranging ship repairs; for monitoring the supply of ship’s spare parts onboard and giving sufficient resource support; for giving guidance to ships for receiving external inspections from port states or oil majors; for participating in the investigation into marine engine/electrical apparatus damages, pollution incidents/accidents, near misses, and giving remedial measures; for analysing ship’s fuel consumption data and proposing fuel consumption saving rewards to crew; for appraising engineers' performance and giving suggestions about engineer officers' arrangement on a ship.

Crew Department

The crew department is responsible for making out annual crew demand/supply reports, and drafting crew service contracts; for drafting plans for crew leasing, dispatchment, promotion, training (including on-the-job training), as well as their performance evaluations; for implementing crew salary distribution policies and auditing crew’s boarding wages; for workplace safety management, onboard medicine arrangements and supply, crew alcohol and drug tests, and crew shore leave.

Service Department

The service department is responsible for the company’s daily administrative, logistic and safeguarding issues. Typically, the department is responsible for dealing with the so-called

‘red-headed document’ (the administrative order). To some extent, the role of this department is like the secretariat of the company. The department is also responsible for doing work-related statistics; for drafting the company annual work plan; for procurement of ship’s supplies and spare parts; and for performance appraisals of shore-based staff and salary issues.

Crew

The seafarer’s branch company of the Group Company was in charge of selection, recruitment and management of all the seafarers for manning the whole fleet. According to the crew manager, C1 did not directly recruit seafarers from the seafarer’s labour market.

The seafarer’s branch company was responsible for the supply of a fixed amount of seafarers to C1 as a package deal. Therefore, C1 did not need to sign any contracts with the crew. The supply of the crew depended on annual estimation of the demand for its fleet.

Currently the number was about 300. C1 had independent power over routine crew management. Based on the company’s crew management rules, the average working period onboard was between 6 and 9 months. In C1, the crew team was comparatively stable. The company tries to fix individual crew members on a particular ship, if that individual’s work performance was positively appraised by the company. Some of the crew did not change ship and have been working together for several years.

In terms of their responsibilities in OHSM, each of the crew has corresponding responsibility to comply with operational instructions and procedures as stated in the OHSMS. In general, crew are obliged to report to shore management whatever occurs onboard ship that has implications for OHSM. In particular, the crew should collect and report safety related problems to shore management according to reporting procedures. In addition, for the purpose of continuous improvement of the safety management, crew should be consulted to get their participation into the process of OHSM.